


NATURAL RESPONSE

by roughmagic



Series: A SINCERE EFFORT [3]
Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguity, Belting, Big Boss Is A Villain, Brainwashing, Canon-Typical Violence, Choking, Come Eating, Complete, Dom/sub Undertones, Doublethink, Eventual Happy Ending, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, Extremely Dubious Consent, Fighting Kink, Gaslighting, Hospitalization, Human Furniture, Licking Jenny Holzer Off Ocelot's Gums, Masochism, Minor Big Boss/Kazuhira Miller, Multi, Ocelot Gets Cucked, Oral Sex, Other, POV Second Person, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Power Imbalance, Public Humiliation, Sadism, Spoilers, Surgery mentions, Under-negotiated Kink, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-21
Updated: 2018-05-31
Packaged: 2019-05-09 20:04:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 6
Words: 32,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14722724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roughmagic/pseuds/roughmagic
Summary: “Attention and awareness are two different beasts. If you don’t have both operating in concert, processing gets complicated. You can lose all sorts of things in the shuffle.”





	1. IT'S ALL OVER NOW

**Author's Note:**

> Here we are, the direct sequel to Self-Interest! It's part of an AU that's expanded beyond my wildest dreams, aided/abetted entirely by [witchoil,](https://archiveofourown.org/users/witchoil) one of the real ones.

 

 

> **IT'S NICE WHEN YOU DECIDE TO LIKE SOMEONE**
> 
> **AND, WITHOUT DECLARING YOURSELF,**
> 
> **DO WHAT'S POSSIBLE**
> 
> **TO FURTHER HIS HAPPINESS.**
> 
> **THIS CAN TAKE THE FORM OF GIFTS,**
> 
> **LOVELY FOOD, PUBLICITY, OR**
> 
> **ADVANCED WARNING.**

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the hierarchal ecosystem of dangerous things on Mother Base, you’re very aware of your own status.

You know the Boss is at the top, because he’s Big Boss. Beyond that, everyone you know would kill and die for him.

You know Commander Miller and Ocelot are next. Miller has been frosty to you since graduation, but it makes you more aware of who he is as a threat, the fact that he’s become infinitely more dangerous now that he’s survived the worst. That he’s as deeply integrated into Mother Base as anybody could be, and he can move the people on it as extensions of himself if he has to. Ocelot is Ocelot.

You know that in theory, the Ocelot Unit is next, that they take great pride in being a couple notches above everybody else in the food chain, but you were hand-fed to be better. You don’t have a special uniform or a bunch of competitive buddies to back you up like they do, but Ocelot made sure you wouldn’t need either. You don’t need anything that exists outside of the finely-tuned, self-sustained environment of your own body and mind, not after him.

Brass Moth is theoretically the same. And Painted Lion and Weeping Eagle, wherever they are, the first two of Ocelot’s kittens. Quiet should make this strata too, although you know she wasn’t trained the way you were. Subsequently she kills and moves in a different way, but she’s nice enough company and you know she’s just as ready to get her hands dirty for the Boss as you.

You know what you are since graduating Ocelot’s special training, if there was ever any doubt it would wear off, or you would revert to a more normal state. You’d been tested at home and abroad—nobody’s been shy about sending you on Combat missions. You haven’t been shy about going, and occasionally relishing in being an overachiever. You worked for your resilience, you deserve to enjoy the fruits of it. Your time away brings into sharp relief just how you feel about home, about what it should be. How it should be a known quantity.

What you  _don’t_  know is where the thing that’s haunting Mother Base stands on this continuum.

If you knew for a fact who or what it was, it would help. If it was something like Quiet that’d make sense, or maybe someone with Ocelot Unit training—but not from the actual Unit. They’re very good, but you know what their footsteps sound like. If it’s Eagle or Lion, you don’t know what they’re like, but you feel confident you could keep up with them, and you don’t want to ask Ocelot before you have a reason to. You feel a need to approach him with evidence in hand, something concrete that you can show as proof of your reasoning.

This is an old, leftover feeling: you don’t need proof for Ocelot, namely because you don’t need to convince Ocelot. It would be nice if he believed you, but it’s not necessary and wouldn’t guarantee a real confirmation of whatever it is you’ve come up with. You’ve got long hours in the nights after work shifts that you can spend prowling around. Your daytime friends either don’t ask or don’t know, and Quiet doesn’t seem to care when she sees you wandering around.

It bothers you that Security doesn’t ask you about it. They don’t even acknowledge that you seem to be searching Mother Base like a gridded crime scene when you stop by to check tapes. There’s got to be someone there reporting to Ocelot that you’re asking strange questions, pulling rank to look at hours and hours of the same grainy footage.

You can stand on a balcony and rest both hands on the cold railing, shut your eyes and breathe in the salt air. It tastes dark around you, inside you. Something is out there.

Shrew is your main confidante: he knows what you look like strung out and losing it, so he knows that this is more on the side of a playful hobby than a mental breakdown. He would let you know if there was anything unusual going on within the Ocelot Unit, but there isn’t. The good Major himself had been called away for meetings more than usual, but that’s not cause for alarm or suspicion by itself.

You know it’s not Ocelot out there at night, hunting. In the time since you graduated, he’s stalked you once or twice for fun. To make sure you weren’t getting sloppy, or maybe just to see what you’d do. And it  _had_  been fun. This just makes you uneasy.

It’s a relief when he finally interrupts your long circuits around the base, although it’s not more than looking up out of a reverie to find him standing halfway out of a hatch. The light behind him is red and you have to suddenly chart your place in the universe, in Mother Base, narrow it down, and remember that you’re this close to Room 101.

He doesn’t give you any kind of beckoning looks or even a shrug, just stares. He could’ve been staring a long time: you can zone out for hours, left unattended. 

This is unusual, so you have to chase it. Curiosity, and all those clichés.

Room 101 is much as you remember it. Stifling, red, the picture of hell, etcetera. Ocelot’s waiting by the only chair in the room by the time you’re done sight-seeing, and your skin crawls as you sit in it. You know it’s for you. It’s your chair, even if it is stripped of the restraints that had held you last time you’d sat in it. 

Ocelot stands back and looks at you. Not without interest, but a kind of scientific patience. You can stare at him right back, unafraid. He looks good—he always does, honestly. Raw-hide handsome. He looks a little thinner than you remember, in the face. There’s no way it’s been that long since you’ve seen him last, so it must be how he’s showing fatigue.

Anyway, you’ll both sit here in silence until one of you falls asleep. Ocelot never blinks first, but you don’t care if you have to, if it gets things started. “This is nice. Are we on a date?”

Ocelot strokes his moustache and dodges the question. “Brings back memories, doesn’t it? Not all of them, of course.”

“If this is a refresher class, I’m not interested.”

“Somehow, I think you will be.”

You stand up and kick the chair underneath you backwards in the same motion. Ocelot doesn’t flinch at the sound, but neither do you. The right way to answer him with words hasn’t appeared, but he has to know. You can make your own choices now.

“Awful aggressive of you, Civet.” Ocelot’s eyes sparkle. “Security tells me you’ve been almost as paranoid as Miller lately.”

At least someone is doing their job. You leave the Miller thread where it is: you aren’t Moth, and he isn’t a soft spot for you. There’s something in the air of this space that makes you uneasy beyond the Room 101 ambiance, an addition to the background smell, and Ocelot doesn’t seem to mind as you take your time looking around.

The corners are all dark and red, more clearly defined than you remember. You’re also not drugged out of your skull, so that helps. It’s a stillness of the air. It’s a movement in the air. “We aren’t alone.”

Ocelot spreads his hands, ever the pedantic teacher. “What do your senses tell you?”

When have those ever been reliable? They tell you that there’s no other person in the room, when there is some other person in the room. There’s a taste that you can’t place. You can’t smell it, but you know there’s a scent. There’s some smearing around the red auxiliary lights. Like a fog.

“Hell of a trick, Ocelot,” the Boss says, inches from your face and close enough to make you jerk back. “How’d you manage it?”

Ocelot’s still staring at you, even as you back up a step. “Attention and awareness are two different beasts. If you don’t have both operating in concert, processing gets complicated. You can lose all sorts of things in the shuffle.”

You stare into open space, searching for anything, any kind of tell. Even the parasite camo under development isn’t this good, not unless R&D found a way to skin Quiet. “Are you talking to him, or me?”

He smiles at you. Red on black. “Who else is with us, Civet?”

He’s unreliable. Even worse than your eyes. You shut them, lifting yourself into a basic CQC stance. All at once things seem to surface: there’s the noise of another person’s body, the movement of fabric. Leather creaking. You can feel the disturbances through the shut-in air of Room 101 as he moves, although his steps are very, very light. He’s better than any Ocelot Unit. He might even be better than Ocelot.

You aren’t used to this way of looking enough to be able to form a picture of him, but you can hear him when he moves forward, backing up quickly out of grappling range. The kind of loud scraping lunge forward meant to telegraph itself and put you on guard. You can’t stop yourself from smiling: nothing like this has ever happened to you before, and you won’t deny that you like it so far. This is new, this is  _weird_.

“Having fun, kid?” It sounds like the Boss, but you know it is not the Boss. Instinctively.

And if he’s not the Boss, it’s alright to flirt a little, then. “I would be, if you’d hurry up and catch me.” 

Boots drag in another lunge and you take off dancing out of reach—there’s no point in keeping your footsteps light, and the sounds help you make sure you aren’t about to crash into a support beam. If you can get to a wall, you can put your back against something. It’s not a great plan, but it’s better than nothing.

There’s the noise of bells and you feel disappointed in yourself before the thought connects to language—it’s Ocelot. You’d forgotten about Ocelot, so caught up in your ghost. God, that’s embarrassing.

You crash into him just long enough for him to plant a hand between your shoulder blades and push you right back the way you’d come, but at least it doesn’t give you time to get tangled in the wrong person. The body you collide with is real and stunningly fast, ready to wrangle you into a pin. You hit the floor hard and hit your head even harder, dazing you for the moment it takes to press you flat against the hangar floor.

It’s not a very technical hold, just a hand on your neck, but you know better than to fight it. Better to wait. You can feel fingertips but leather too—Gloves? Half-gloves. It’s a  _big_  hand. Not afraid to squeeze, either.

Looking hard, you’re seeing double, but you’re seeing something. It’s dark. It’s a man, but you can’t pin his face down. Focusing on him is a losing battle—your eyes slide off him, can’t seem to hold him in one place. You reach out, slowly and fingers lax so he knows it’s not a clawing motion. Something like a leather wall, but a body moving and breathing, above yours. “What’s your name?” It really does sound like the Boss, but the Boss knows who you are.

You lick your lips and strain a little, just to get the pressure eased off your throat. The hand moves closer towards the base of your neck. No less dangerous. Swallowing is pleasantly difficult. “Wounded Civet.” Your hands wander lower, navigating by way of a jacket zipper, but progress halts as a knee places itself between your legs like a warning shot.

That’s fine. There’s enough slack in his jacket that you can dig your fingers in and cling, letting gravity help you pull. The body above doesn’t move, but doesn’t try to dislodge you, either. “You got me.” You sound hoarse, not quite choked yet. “This is… pretty fun.”

“Even if you can’t see me?” 

“I can feel you.”

Ocelot’s spurs jingle somewhere close by, and he sounds exasperated. “Snake, you should know better…”

“They’re gonna be good,” he decides, and a left hand opens your jaw experimentally. The little tugging motion is familiar from Ocelot. “Aren’t you, Civet?” 

“Mhm.” You make an agreeable noise around keeping your mouth open, a big thumb dragging over your lower lip. It’s easy to tilt your head and chase where you know his fingers will be, mouth starting to brush against his knuckles. There’s a thrill at relying on touch, unable to reliably see who it is on top of you.

“Yeah,” says your Boss’s voice. “We’ll get along fine. Won’t we?”

“Umhm.” 

Ocelot lets a sigh out through his nose. “They’ve got a history, you know. Of—” 

Before Ocelot can ruin it, you bite the hand at your mouth, turning so that you clamp your back teeth down hard on his fingers. There’s a satisfying crunch before the hand lifts away from your neck and hits you once with a closed fist, sharply, and the knock against the hangar floor is enough to put you out. 

  

You don’t think you’ve been out long, since nothing seems too unmoored when you surface back into consciousness. Your head doesn’t hurt beyond the expected amount, you can feel all your body parts—there’s a hell of a weight on your back, though, and someone flopped you over onto your stomach. The hangar floor is cold against your cheek, and there’s a conversation flowing around you like a river.

“… a whole week I thought it had gone off without a hitch, but they ended up just slamming into him holding a full cup of coffee. Didn’t even slow down.”

“No shit. Did he ask for an explanation?”

“I said it was sleepwalking.”

“Huh.”

“He told me to ‘ease up a little’.” 

“Yeah, he would.”

You can taste salt and the metallic tang of another person’s hand in your mouth, and some of your teeth hurt a little from where he must’ve ripped his hand free. Whoever it is, he really isn’t your Boss: both hands were flesh. It’s a small comfort. You’ve already done more to him than what’s fair in life. 

“Civet’s come round,” Ocelot says, not far away.

A now-familiar hand messes up your hair in something that’s probably supposed to be fond or mocking, maybe both. Light catches on a zipper pull and you track it greedily—it’s hard to look back, especially with someone…  _sitting_  on you, but he’s more defined. Room 101 reflects red on him just like it does Ocelot, although sometimes it swims in and out of focus.

“All that time training, and you didn’t teach’em any manners?”

“They’re a lost cause in that department.” There’s the sound of the two of them clasping hands, and the weight lifts off you so suddenly as to be painful. You get as far as rolling over onto your back before Ocelot puts a boot on your chest. “Aren’t you.”

You flick the spur near your face with a fingernail, listening to it spin. “Sure, Major.”

“Ready to try again?”

“Okay.”

Ocelot applies a little weight to his boot to focus you. “Who else is in the room with us, Civet?”

You can see him now, silhouetted but not gone all the way into shadow. “The Boss.” This is wrong and you can rationalize it, but it remains the only logical conclusion.

There’s an old bodily sensation contained inside you now, something like being very aware of your own guts. Your weight, the way you breathe, everything underneath Ocelot’s boot.

“Tell me how you know.”

“I  _know_ ,” you say, frustrated. You don’t want to say that you know it’s him because you can see his red left hand, because you can’t. You see his shrapnel like a distant mountain range, but it isn’t there. His face is wrong. The smell is wrong. This is not the Boss.

But, you knew that.

You’d known he wasn’t the Boss as soon as he couldn’t be anyone else. That’s bad logic. That doesn’t make sense. This is the Boss, but this isn’t the Boss. 

“The Boss,” you hear yourself say again, something in you churning and chewing to try and swallow it.

Ocelot makes a little encouraging noise low in his throat and rocks his boot forward, putting his weight on the toe instead of the heel. He wants you to get this. He’s showing you off? But the Boss already knows you—but, the Boss hit you worse than he ever has before. You bit him because you thought it wasn’t the Boss.

Staring at him doesn’t help, but you do it anyway. His face that you know instinctively looks patient, almost bored, like you aren’t starting to tremble under Ocelot’s boot from the force of whatever it is that’s happened. You try to shove Ocelot off and fail, suddenly feeling as if you’re not the one staring at the Boss, but he’s the one staring at you. Ocelot’s boot is a metal pin keeping you in place. Specimen under glass.

Internal pressure makes you want to say something, anything. That is the Boss. That is not the Boss. Only one of those can be right—but, you think, old habits scaffolding around your thoughts and helping you balance, helping you breathe slower. They can both be right. He’s not the Boss, but in this moment, he is the Boss. He’s the Boss in every way that should matter to you.

“There we go,” Ocelot says approvingly, removing his boot. You can breathe freely, but it feels better to stay on your back for the moment. The two of them look monumental above you. Red granite.

“I’m not sure I buy it.” The Boss grumbles, folding his arms over his chest. Motorcycle jacket, leather. Not very practical for stealth, but he fills it out nicely.

“You’re a lot to take in all at once.” Ocelot reaches down and pulls you to your feet.  “Civet needed a moment to adjust.”

He makes a noise like rocks in a garbage disposal, and you let yourself take a few steps back and forth, looking from different angles. He’s different. He’s not Venom. But he might be. You’re not shocked by the idea of it, that this Boss is the singular Boss for the moment. Maybe some kind of body double or doppelganger. Ocelot is righting your long-upended chair, housekeeping at a strange time. Watching the two of you size each other up.

Whether he does it to mock you or because he wants the same changing views, you catch him moving like he’s looking for something about you he hasn’t seen yet. When he reaches out you’re not sure if you should jerk back, but you let him touch you. A big hand on the top of your head, gripping just enough to rock you back and forth experimentally. Testing a limit.

You want to turn your head and snap at his hand, but you feel like you already know he wouldn’t flinch. “Sir?”

The Boss grunts an acknowledgement, examining one of your hands in both of his. Big and weathered, all ten fingers. It’s not a gentle exploration as much as kicking the tires, you think.

“Should I apologize for biting you?” 

“You should apologize for not drawing blood.” His eye is strange, like it should be more red for being in this light and refuses to take the color. “So did Ocelot train the rest of you, or just your mind?”

“They’re ready for combat, Boss.” Ocelot is soft, pleased, outside your periphery. “For anything, truthfully.”

“There are more like this?” He turns your head this way and that. If he put his fingers in your mouth to inspect your teeth, you don’t think you’d bite him this time. Unadulterated attention is nice, even when it’s from something bigger and meaner than you. Maybe even especially. 

“Three others. Although I’d say Civet is probably the most dependably functional.”

“Huh.” The Boss leaves you with a vague, too-rough pat on the cheek before turning to Ocelot. You know Ocelot’s fast, that he should be fast enough to move when the Boss grabs for him, but he just makes a little choked noise as the Boss seizes him by the throat, drags him off-balance and onto his knees.

You can see the way the jacket stretches over the muscles in his forearm as he squeezes, one of Ocelot’s spurs jingling in the darkness as his heels scrape against the hangar floor.

Your first instinct is to run. Get high ground, cover some distance while his attention is elsewhere, find somewhere you know better to lay in wait. Set an ambush. But as much as your guts jerk towards the door, you stay where you are, frozen and watching. You don’t want to leave Ocelot like that, bizarrely—you don’t even want to look away from whatever is happening, like your witnessing it is the only thing keeping it from escalating. 

“Did you ask him to do it?”

You start, realizing that the Boss is talking to you, even with his face pointed down at Ocelot. “Sir?”

“Did you ask him to go in and rearrange you like that?”

You can pick out Ocelot’s profile in the red light, jagged with effort. Both his hands are on the Boss’s, but he doesn’t look like he’s fighting any harder than he wants to. His guns are on his belt. He could draw them, but he isn’t. Won’t.

“Civet,” the Boss grates, impatient. Ocelot seems to be fighting his own body’s desire to scrabble. 

“No, sir, but he said…” You lick your lips, nervous for the first time in a long time. “He told us we might be different, but he said it wouldn’t matter. It’d be alright, because we were his, and we all belong to you.”

“He would say that, wouldn’t he.” A twist, an involuntary noise in response. “Do you believe it?”

You’re thinking so hard of the way the Boss had let you hold onto him when you needed it, trying to connect to this, to reconcile it. “I graduated, sir.” It’s the only meaningful proof of your beliefs. Do those words mean anything to him? 

The Boss throws Ocelot into the chair,  _your_  chair, enough to rock him back on two legs, just to slam his boot down on the front edge the seat to anchor it again. He doesn’t move his boot when he’s done, just leaves it planted there between Ocelot’s legs. The ease of the motion and the confidence that he carries it out gives you the sudden conviction that nothing that exists physically is beyond his control.

“You can go.” His back is turned to you at this angle, and all you can see is Ocelot, spread open and rosy in Room 101. His hands wander up the Boss’s bent leg, past the edge of the motorcycle boots. Coaxing or something.

“Sir?”

“I’ll find you later, and we can talk.”

You don’t want to leave Ocelot here, out of breath and still obviously hard because that’s not always a safe gauge for human distress, and so, probably not for him. But he’s armed. This is the Boss. He’ll be fine. Your skin crawls as you turn away from them, like not looking at the Boss frees him to do something he couldn’t while you watched. 

“Hey, Civet. Don’t touch him again.” The Boss calls, once your hand has finally landed on the hatch to the door. You turn back and hear as well as see the flighty orange attempts of a lighter, until it catches and cigar smoke bleeds out. “You’re mine, aren’t you? So don’t play with Ocelot.”

“Sir?” You hate hearing yourself say it again, like a parrot. Useless. The Boss makes a noise and gives you a second chance, so you straighten up. Force yourself not to look at Ocelot. “Yes, sir. Understood.”

  

 

He might say  _Dismissed_ , he might not, you don’t wait around to find out. The night outside Room 101 is cold and exposed to all kinds of huge sensations, like the smell of the ocean or how you can hear wind moving through the pipes. It feels real enough to make you wonder if anything in the space behind you had happened, which is cruel and familiar.

You’re struck by an old and unused impulse to tell someone, to go running for help. You hadn’t done that in training. You’d only run to Ocelot to try and fight him, it had never occurred to you to reach out to anyone else. You hadn’t felt threatened. You had known you could leave, you wanted to stay. 

What would you say to Miller? How would you explain that without coming off as completely unglued? He barely tolerates you as it is. Canary would think you’ve gone off the deep end. Shrew might believe you, but he can’t interfere. Rhino’s latest accomplishment was being in the same mess hall as Ocelot last month, he’s not the person to burden with this.

Nobody is, you want to tell yourself, walking quickly along the edge of the platform, hand on the consistent cool line of the railing. This isn’t unnatural. This is different, but if it were wrong, you would know. You would’ve done something more. Ocelot would’ve told you to do something. This is different, you got coddled by feeling secure, but this is how things are now.

That feeling chases you all the way back to your quarters, and you’re stuck for a moment between the still air inside them and the living air outside. There isn’t enough in there to keep your thoughts where you want them, but the night is dangerous, too full.

_I’ll find you later, and we can talk._

You slam the door shut, twisting the lock. That wouldn’t keep him out, but you want to do it anyway. A small act of resistance. You’ll find Ocelot, you’ll talk to him first. Or in the daylight, where other people can see the Boss, where they can see you. Outside Room 101, where none of you could hide.


	2. HEY LITTLE COBRA

> **IF YOU WERE A GOOD CHILD**
> 
> **WITH FAIR PARENTS, YOU WOULD FREEZE IN YOUR TRACKS,**
> 
> **GO LIMP, AND TAKE A DESERVED BEATING.**
> 
> **A HOLDOVER FROM THIS MIGHT HAVE YOU**
> 
> **SUBMIT TO REAL DANGER,**
> 
> **BELIEVING THAT SOMEONE IS**
> 
> **APPORTIONING JUST PUNISHMENT AND**
> 
> **THINKING THEY WILL STOP SHORT OF KILLING YOU.**

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There’s a window of time when you expect the storm to break and the rest of Mother Base to notice the Boss, but it passes by. The expectation lasts so long that the eventual denial of it, the refusal of the communal body to react to something unusual, leaves you feeling like you’ve got it wrong. You try and articulate that to Shrew about a dozen different ways and sometimes in bad metaphors, but it all comes back to the fact that nobody else seems to be as distressed by the Boss as you are. And you think you’re playing it pretty cool, honestly.

Part of it, you’re sure, is Ocelot: in the daylight hours he’s always at the Boss’s side. You’ve watched them from across the mess hall and from cramped crawlspaces, and they walk together. Not perfectly in stride, Ocelot maybe one step behind. You try to put on your thinking cap and imagine what it would be like to be a regular Diamond Dog again, and you can’t see anybody willingly question the Boss when Ocelot is right there.

_Whatever do you mean?_ he might say, all half-lidded eyes and patience. _Do you need a reminder of who Big Boss is?_

Even Miller, that hotly distant star on the horizon, doesn’t help. Doesn’t act as a good barometer. He stands apart from the Boss when you can catch them together in public, chaperoned by Ocelot. There’s a distance and a reinforced stiffness of his body language that makes you think Miller’s not entirely comfortable with this Boss, but there’s no backbone to it. Staying still to evade detection. Prey behavior.

Drills and inspections kick up a notch, always with the Boss watching from somewhere high up, taking in the tactical view. Your floater status between units means you default to Combat during emergencies, so you take up positions when the sirens activate and go through the motions alongside the Combat jocks. They’re all highly strung whenever you fall in with them, probably some kind of anxiety about whether or not Miller’s getting squirrelly again or if the Boss is looking for promotion material.

You watch them aim their eyes straight ahead, ears trained for signals, and you imagine that you’re doing it on their behalf when you keep your eyes on the Boss. You can see him talking, gesturing and pointing to things as Ocelot either nods or folds his arms thoughtfully. Thinking about making improvements to procedures? Criticizing sloppy execution?

The days start to get slushy and translucent again for you, like they did in training. You can’t make yourself sleep regularly, and eating’s getting less interesting. There’s an unease inside you that hasn’t solidified yet, like cold concrete trying to set. There’s never a time you can talk to Ocelot alone when the sun is up. You don’t know what you want to say to him when you listen to his boots on the catwalk, jingling between the thunder of the Boss.

Whatever’s bothering you, you think to yourself as you wedge yourself between some pipes and prepare for a long evening, _shouldn’t_ be bothering you. And it bothers you that you’re bothered by it. The threshold for what bothers you is abnormally high, and you resent this like it’s a failing.

Which it isn’t, you know. The sun slips down behind a platform and the dinner notification rings out over the PA system. Feeling disrupted by something is the same signal as pain: it’s something letting you know about a point of distress, a threat, and you know how and when to filter it out. When it’s useful and when it’s not.

The temperature drops and the night watch starts. This would be easier if the Boss wasn’t the thing bothering you, like something lodged in your throat you can’t swallow past comfortably. Doublethink makes him slippery to consider theoretically, so the burden transfers to Ocelot. Ocelot holds the responsibility to explain this to you.

That’s why you’re wedged up here outside of the residential quarters you know he’s in. The light has been on for a while, but the Boss leaves eventually. Finishing a cigarette, which sounds like an off-key note. Hand-rolled. You watch him leave the quarters, cigarette butt getting flicked over a rail and into the ocean. Against regulations. 

Part of you wants to follow him as he slips into the shadows between the sodium lights lining the platforms, see where he goes. He’d been the thing you couldn’t place before, and to see where he wanders strikes you as important.

But the light in Ocelot’s window hasn’t gone out, and you can’t remember how long it’s been since you’ve seen him alone.

Uncurling from yourself like a cocoon, you keep it quiet and mostly casual as you break into his quarters. Security will think it’s weird, but they know better than to report _everything_ they see in Ocelot’s territory. And as long as you aren’t battering the door down, they won’t send anyone to check it out.

The shower’s going when you slip in, shutting the door and locking it again behind you. The last time you were in here had been after a days-long low-speed chase, and after Ocelot got what he wanted from the experience, he let you in here to return the favor. Reciprocal nastiness. The rooms had retained the same kind of bland, theoretical presence of Ocelot that made for a nice liminal space, but something else is in here now.

The signs of another, unavoidable person, but not strong enough to suggest he’s living there alongside Ocelot. An uncharacteristic heap of dishes left in the sink. An extra pair of obviously new boots, heels against a wall, untouched. The old smell of a cigar, the aggressiveness of the scent lingering in still air. It’s just going to get worse, Ocelot doesn’t like opening the windows. Or even the shades.

The bathroom door is open when you get to it, the air pillowing out hot and wet on your skin like smothering linens. The mirror is fogged up when you lean against the sink’s edge, and you watch Ocelot finish showering. There’s no way he didn’t notice you, although you’d kinda partly wished for some start or recognition. He just gives you a tired look and continues washing off that determinedly odorless soap he likes.

His body looks different to you now, although you’ve seen it often enough not to be distracted by it. Long and thick triangles of muscle in some spots, always anchored to knobs of bone so close to the surface. _Everything_ feels closer to that surface now, and you can pick up on bruises here and there. Some more fresh than others, too many to be acquired through training. Too thorough to be accidental.

It’s stupid and an old-life reflex that jumps you to thinking that _the Boss is hurting him_ , when you know Ocelot wouldn’t let anything happen to him that he didn’t want to happen. The truth, you hope, is that he’s finally getting fucked as hard as he likes. 

The handle squeaks as he twists the water off, and it seems strange that a long time ago, you spent a lot of time going through withdrawal in that same shower stall, the one he stands in now. The Major doesn’t seem nostalgic as he starts to towel off, unselfconscious as always. 

“Civet,” Ocelot drawls, but you hear a tiredness in it. Faded silk. Is that just what you want to hear? “You’re disobeying direct orders.”

“I wasn’t forbidden from your quarters.” Technically, you’re just watching. Nothing playful about this.

He makes a face as he towels at his hair. “Use a little critical thinking, for once in your life.”

“What’s going on, sir?” You don’t know how else to ask it, how else to phrase it. He doesn’t answer or tell you to shut up. “The Boss—” You want to say _that man_ , but the degree of separation makes you feel nauseous, pulling too far at an acceptable truth. “Snake is… different.”

“People change.”

“Not the Boss.”

“Then maybe you did.” The way he sets into you feels like he’s deboning a fish. “Didn’t it ever occur to you that perhaps you’ve been living with a different picture than the reality of him? Maybe you forgot who he was, with all those sheep drifting home. Why do you think you know the legendary soldier, Big Boss?”

You don’t have any answer to that. Like finding a horrible skeleton on the beach and knowing more things out there are alive made in its image. There’s no way he can be right, that wouldn’t be fair. It wouldn’t be bearable. It’s a bad move, but you have to deflect away from yourself. “Did he hurt you?”

Ocelot snorts. “God, you’re embarrassing.”

Your face burns. He’s right. You are being terribly embarrassing, considering who you are, who he is.

What is it you want to do for him? Dab iodine on his wounds and kiss his temples? Charge into battle to defend his honor? You don’t want to do either for him, knowing he wouldn’t deserve it in the long run but more so because it would insult who he is on a fundamental level. _What_ he is.

He wraps the towel around his waist and sighs. “Just go, Civet. I don’t really care to hold your hand through whatever crisis you’re having.”

You get partway through your next accusation when the Boss opens the bathroom door, and you stop talking instinctually. An irrational flood of guilt and panic washes over you much like the drier air from outside, cooler from the darkness of night. The Boss should look tempered in regular fluorescent lights like any other human or tangible object, but it makes him even worse. Even more unfortunately real.

“I wouldn’t mind.” The Boss says, flatly. “What’s wrong, Civet?”

He has to be joking, but you can’t tell. You suddenly have no control over the situation. “I’m—sorry sir, I’ll go.”

“No,” he says, not moving from the doorway.

You can’t remember ever feeling afraid of the Boss, but your ability to identify fear has been warped within recent memory. It might just be anxiousness or concern. He extends a hand and you watch yourself take it, and the feeling of him being flesh and blood is almost startling. You had expected something like a branch or a rock.

He doesn’t grab you into a judo throw, just draws you out of the bathroom before he gestures for Ocelot to follow too. Everybody out. Family discussion time.

The Boss doesn’t force or encourage you to go anywhere, but the pull of him keeps you locked within reach. He drags a chair out from the table, a pristine white ashtray you’ve never noticed sitting on the otherwise empty surface. When he sits down, Ocelot steps quietly to his side, hand coming up to rest on the back of the chair. If you tried hard you could probably hear what they say to each other, but you don’t want to. The Boss snorts at something and yanks the towel off Ocelot’s waist, letting it lay in a limp heap on the floor near his ankles. Ocelot’s body looks different outside of the light of the bathroom. Something more primeval.

“Come over here, Civet.” He gestures even as Ocelot moves to kneel in front of him, and a mix of hot and cold wash up and down your spine before he keeps going, onto all fours. Somehow that’s worse. You’re at the Boss’s side by the time he’s put a huge boot heel up on Ocelot’s back, the molded rubber soles black and structural against where pale skin pulls thin across the other man’s ribs.

He says something to you but you can’t catch it, not with Ocelot’s straight hair, still damp from the shower, split apart by the column of his neck. He has to lean out and physically lead you again, first with one hand, then two. You want Ocelot to move, but he doesn’t. A marble table.

The Boss settles you on his lap and it drags you back to the present, to your own awareness instead of the one centered around Ocelot. He wouldn’t do that if he didn’t want to. You have to focus on your own survival. “The last time I saw you, what’d I say?”

“You told me to stay away from Ocelot. Sir.”

“So tell me why you’re here.”

From here you can see a bruise on Ocelot’s thigh, just starting to fade away to yellow. It wraps around the edge of his thigh.

“Don’t look at him, look at me.” He doesn’t have to touch you to grab your face and turn it towards him. Like adjusting a lamp.

“I want to know what you’re doing, sir.” You’ve personally never gotten anywhere trying to be subtle.

When his eyebrows lift, you feel like you see it more on the side where the eyepatch is. That should be a safe blank space to concentrate on, but it’s not. You could fall into it. “Is that it?”

You think it’s a big question, but it seems small to him. How do you even begin to speak to him about what you want to know?

The Boss moves, businesslike, first scooping your knees up in an arm and then laying them back down over his thighs as he puts his other boot up on Ocelot. “I want our Diamond Dogs to become what they were meant to be from the start. You’re all outgrowing the maps Kaz drew up at the start, getting bigger than the cage he’s kept you in.” His chin lowers, the movement forcing you to look at him. “Have you ever done anything that made full use of you?”

You try to repress a shiver. No. Not since training. There have been moments where you thought maybe, but it had been in the field. And you’d be lying to yourself if you said you hadn’t chased that danger, that potential to be pushed farther than you’d gone before, but there’s not much else like Ocelot in the world. “I just… want to be useful in any way I can be, sir.”

“Don’t be shy.” He says it gently, jostles you on his lap in a way that makes you momentarily furious even as it cajoles something very old within you. “C’mon.”

“No. I haven’t felt challenged, sir.” A guilty relief. Like you’re somehow throwing everything else you’ve done under the bus. “Not since training.”

The Boss’s hand fans out against your lower back and he pets you like an animal. “Yeah. Your first real mentor leaves an impression on you, don’t they?”

“Yes, sir.”

He chews that over for a while, and you risk looking at him more directly, focusing on the edge of his face, his cheekbone. Nowhere distinct, but he has to know you’re paying attention. “Leave it to me. I won’t see you wasted playing peacekeeper and flower picking missions. That’s not what you were made for.”

You hear yourself say it back to him dreamily, _I won’t see you…_ What did he say? Wasted as…?

It’s impossible to know what he reads off your face, how he interprets it. Whether it’s what he wants or not. Regardless, you feel his hand thread into your hair, anchoring on your scalp and pulling back with the insistent strength of a hydraulic press. “But you’re going to have to quit this soft-hearted bullshit.”

It hurts a little, but what makes you squirm is having your throat bared. You know you look good bowed back like this, but you don’t know if that’s why he did it. “Sir?”

“You had a while to play house and it got boring. Whatever I choose to do, is something that needs to happen. Do you understand?” Your back begins to ache and you can smell a long day of being under the sun on him, animal and foreign. It’s not enough to make you struggle against his grip. “That’s why Ocelot is there.”

Why Ocelot is on the floor, why Ocelot is bruised. Why he’s watching the drills. Why you’re getting it explained to you slowly. “You’re going to whip us into shape, sir?”

His head tilts. “Uh-huh.”

You have the clear and shocking image of the Boss with his hand between your legs, letting you arch up long and open against him, one of your heels digging into Ocelot’s back and ribs for leverage. It wouldn’t be difficult, you don’t even think the Boss would be surprised if that’s what you wanted from him, from this moment. It’d be easy. Like business. Like signing a loan. Hasn’t he just said he’s going to hurt you, in nicer words?

The Boss’s grip on you eases off, leaving your neck craned back and free to slowly right yourself. His hand drifts back down to your waist, there to steady you. “Feel better, Civet?” 

“Yes.” You know at this range he can see your breathing, even the heavy and embarrassing desire to let him decide what to do with you next. That you want him to take the choice out of your hands scares you into action. “Sir, I’ve got a question.”

“Shoot.” He has the easy tone of knowing that he has every answer you could want.

“If… in training, if Ocelot had broken me, even without meaning to—?”

“Wouldn’t have been his fault. He has a standard, but it’s up to you to meet it or know when to quit.” He cocks his head the other direction. “You made it, though.”

The pressure building up internally had been hard to place and more unbearable for that reason, but you feel it peel apart, split in two naturally. Like a rock broken by running water.

Snake looks amused when you look back at him, studying his face. “Thinking of revenge?”

“No. Guess I was just curious.” You want to scream in triumph at the newly-won confusion, the dissonance. It feels awful to hold inside you, but the discomfort is real. You know something is wrong, and it isn’t you. “I’ll be going now, sir.”

“Alright.” He pats your butt with a locker room camaraderie as you get up, get off of him. You can see muscles starting to strain and stand out in the backs of Ocelot’s thighs, but he’s motionless as you head for the door. 

You pause, banking on some leftover generosity. Since you didn’t ask him to fuck you, you should probably get one more question. The Boss is playing with his lighter, Ocelot’s face not visible to you but tilted up to him. “Was this what you wanted to talk to me about?”

“Huh? No.” The lighter snaps shut with finality. “Another time.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These first two chapters were a bit shorter and milder (I feel) maybe than the rest of the fic, partially because I'm really married to having six chapters total. So, things are gonna be kicking off more intensely this Friday!
> 
> Thank you so much for reading-- this fic has been an incredible exploration for me and I'm so excited to be sharing it with you! :')


	3. A WORLD WITHOUT LOVE

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Time to read those tags!

 

> **THERE IS A PERIOD WHEN IT IS CLEAR**
> 
> **THAT YOU HAVE GONE WRONG**
> 
> **BUT YOU CONTINUE.**
> 
> **SOMETIMES THERE IS A**
> 
> **LUXURIOUS AMOUNT OF TIME**
> 
> **[BEFORE SOMETHING BAD HAPPENS.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFx-5PGLgb4) **

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sleep turns into something nonexistent and undesirable, but that’s something you can force yourself to endure.

You’ve got things to do, so you can’t just drop off the face of the earth. Going to shifts becomes a relief because you’re around others, there’s work to put your hands to, and there’s a kind of safety within the herd. You keep an eye out for Snake every moment you’re up and it leads to more waking hours than you want.

Normally you’ll hit the range or go on a jog to eat up the early morning hours before it gets hot, but today that sounds like too much motion and noise too quickly. The caf is normally quiet at this hour, so that’s where your body floats.

It’s just the dining hall crew right now: there’s an official start time for breakfast and there’s no point in showing up prior unless you want to drink too-hot coffee and stare into space. And so, it’s never unusual to find an XO or two doing that, either seated alone or glaring each other down. There’s always a handful of Intel guys either asleep or eating cold leftovers after an all-nighter, and you nod at Screaming Wallaby as you pass. She just keeps chewing.

You sit down across from Ocelot, and strangely enough, Moth. They aren’t talking, just divining their respective futures in mugs of coffee. White porcelain, black drink. You don’t want to admit it, but Ocelot looks worse than before. Drawn out, something worn thin. Like he’s being tightly stretched over his own alien skeleton. You think of his long pale back in the darkness like a nightmare.

“Hi, Civet.” Moth looks happy enough, at least. “You look beat. When breakfast starts, do you want me to get you a tray?”

“No, thanks. I’ve kinda lost my taste for breakfast food.”

“I’m sure we could put together a sandwich instead, if you want.”

Ocelot is watching like you’re two small birds in the park, but he says nothing.

You blame it on your early start when the Boss gets up close to the table without anyone noticing, the three of you jumping as he plants himself on the bench between Ocelot and Moth. “Morning.”

“Boss,” Ocelot replies, hoarse and schooled into something professional. Still talking like it’s easy, though.

You kick yourself for not immediately watching Moth, seeing what they do. What _they_ see. They cock their head one direction like they’re trying to hear something better before settling down. They don’t seem phased, although the same can’t be said for everyone. Wallaby is rubbing her eyes and turning pale, but Moth seems to have taken it in stride. How are they different from you that they could so easily see him, without any dissonance?

You catch a bobbing movement and look back towards the mess line—there’s three or four Diamond Dogs who have stopped all prep activity to stare in confusion. You can’t blame them. This is weird by any measure—the Boss has generally kept his distance up until now, appearing from afar rather than up close.

“You look burnt out, Civet.” Snake doesn’t say it with any appreciable smirk, but there’s no way it’s not a loaded statement.

“Been a long week, sir.” 

“Seems like there’s a lot of that going around.”

Ocelot makes some kind of assenting noise. 

Moth looks up too obviously as Miller enters the caf, and even ducking back down into their coffee doesn’t disguise it. He’s just chatting with the line chefs, but the intensity with which Moth is not looking in his direction is palpable.

Snake lowers his head like a battering ram and nudges them with his shoulder. “Got a crush on the Commander, huh?”

You meet Ocelot’s eyes across the table in the same moment, and his face doesn’t move. You look at Moth with a kind of ripping sensation. A tearing certainty. _Oh, no. Moth. Oh, Moth, no, don’t. Lie._

Moth looks down and shakes their head, but they’re still smiling. “I’m… happy to see everyone, sir.”

You want to kick them under the table. Moth is a sweet, nervous sort from what you’ve seen, and in private moments of curiosity you’ve wondered what their inner structure must be like that Ocelot took an interest. The _problem_ is, they don’t think of themselves as being on the field. They think they’re at home, they think the Boss is gently teasing them about the worst kept secret on base—do they even recognize that’s not the Boss? Do they think something formed in his shape might as well be him?

Somebody drops something loud in the kitchens and Moth doesn’t even try not to twist around and look, alert. You want to throw coffee in their face, overturn the table, something to disrupt what’s playing out in front of you.

In the same breath, you do want to see what will happen.

“Uh-huh,” Snake says, as they eventually turn back around looking flustered.

“Old mission habits die hard, sir, that’s all.” Moth fusses with a nearby spoon, picking it up, running their thumb against the metal, setting it down again. You’d forgotten about that part of it—they’d gotten blown up protecting Miller or something romantic like that.

“Yeah, I bet.” Snake’s expression while he watches Moth punctures you with irrational anger. Why is he coiling up to torment them? Did he get bored of you? Moth is low-hanging fruit. Moth is easy fucking pickings. _Leave them alone. Look at me. Look at me._

Ocelot is an ivory statue on his other side. It’s an arrogant feeling that’s gotten you in trouble before, but you know in your heart he isn’t going to interfere. He’d let Snake kill Moth and just sit there with his red hands wrapped around his mug for warmth.

You can hear Miller saying something like _Good job, you’re ahead of schedule, go ahead and open early._ It seems like a thousand miles away. Somebody sounds the little breakfast notification sound over the PA, and by the time Miller has emerged from the kitchens, there are already Diamond Dogs filtering in, filling up the silent cafeteria with chatter and activity.

It should feel like a comforting smoke screen, but it doesn’t. The safety of a crowd isn’t anything at all.

“Moth,” Snake grunts, gesturing them in with two fingers. Conspiratorial. “C’mere.”

Your jaw is wired shut as you watch Moth lean in towards him, unafraid. Putting their whole head in the lion’s mouth. You could scream.

Snake just cups a hand around their ear and whispers, and you watch Ocelot. He’s the only gauge you have for this, but he’s frozen in place. His face is never a good indicator of anything, but you hate him vividly in that moment. At least look disapproving or concerned, fake _something_. 

“Yeah, I can,” Moth says, dazed but also clipped short. _Oh, no._ “Yes, sir.”

Miller’s been approaching at even less than his usual pace, carrying two mugs of coffee with determination and precision, keeping his crutch under his arm mostly through willpower alone. Everybody at the table has a drink besides Snake, and you feel a good approximation of a little heartbreak.

Moth stands up decisively, and Snake pats the small of their back as he reaches over and takes their coffee for himself. “Go get’em, tiger.”

They come to a stop in front of Miller, who doesn’t even think to scowl at them. He might say something before Moth grabs him, but the sound of it is lost over both mugs hitting the deck, laying out sudden maps of black coffee. Islands of white ceramic.

People look over and start to stare, especially as Miller’s crutch clatters out of reach and hits a nearby table. Moth has his hand in theirs and their free arm at his waist and you’re searching with a kind of hunger for which way they’ll throw him, where you could maybe dive to try and help, even if you’re just as stone still as Ocelot.

They don’t throw him, of course. Their shoulders dip to one angle and then another, Miller starting to get louder and angrier, and they’re dancing with him. It’s the kind of prom two-step that shouldn’t be hard, but Miller isn’t cooperating. Worse, it doesn’t matter, because Moth is stronger than him. Moth is stronger than anyone else in the room at this moment.

By the time the other soldiers in the caf are staring, Moth has started to sing: _Why do birds, suddenly appear? Every time, you are near?_ They don’t have a bad voice. It’s just a very regular voice at a very regular pitch, but the dreaminess of it wrenches at your guts. _Just like me, they long to be, close to you._

It’s not fair to Moth that you have to look away. No one else is looking away, you know that—what a sight, somebody forcing Miller into a slow dance. You can’t hear Moth’s steps, but you can hear his, dragging on the floor. Sometimes kicking shards of mug.

“Moth—stop it, I _don’t_ —”

“He’s going to blame me for this, you know,” Ocelot says, very quietly.

“He should.” You look up to see Snake smiling at him over his coffee. “It’s your fault.”

Miller’s good leg goes out from underneath him and he’s just a struggling mess of greatcoat in Moth’s arms. They don’t even look like they know they’re dragging him around, eyes somewhere in the middle distance. Tears on their cheeks.

“ _STOP_ IT, MOTH!” Miller sounds desperate, furious. You haven’t wanted to cry on someone else’s behalf in a long, long time, but it sits in your chest and throat now like a hot caged bird.

Glacier Harrier pushes through the front line of staring Dogs and makes a grab for Moth, making soothing noises as he goes. He gets as far as disentangling Miller from them and setting him against a nearby table before turning back to Moth— “Hey, it’s cool, right? It’s just me, Moth, let’s—”

You don’t flinch at much anymore, but you watch a collective start race through the crowd as Moth punches him. Blood lands on a table and Harrier staggers back and falls into Ibex. Moth turns back to Miller with a pleasant expression and they reach for him, but he’s had time to grab a mug. It breaks against Moth’s skull with a blunt noise, and although they sway, it doesn’t stop them.

Miller recoils from their touch and you’ve had enough, you put the bench under your boots and _lunge_. Moth’s priorities change as soon as you hit them, and they drop Miller to engage you. Whatever you’d been expecting, it wasn’t this—Moth strikes like a knife, all concentrated force and precision. You wish the Boss were here. You want him to be here more than anything else, you want him to loop a big arm around Moth and quiet them so it’s not the two of you rolling around and crunching into coffee cup remains and trying to beat each other to death.

Both their hands are on your throat and squeezing, but you’re on top. They’re using a dangerous amount of force, it’s lethal, but that’s never stopped you from acting. You grab their skull by the ears—sorry again, Rhino—pound it into the deck and instantly the pressure on you eases, air flooding back into your burning face. It’s not gone all the way, though, and they’ll start up again as soon as they can.

Moth is mumbling little noises and you reach blindly to the side until you grab a chunk of mug from the floor, digging the sharp edges into your own palm so you can smash the blunt rest of it into Moth’s face. They don’t let go after the first hit, so you keep going until their hands finally drop away from you.

You only feel like you see them again once they aren’t choking you, and it’s not the Moth you remember. Their face is a broken mess of blood and snot and sweat. Greasy with tears and coffee, crunched and cut by porcelain. They’re still humming through split lips and your hands clench in the front of their uniform, heart pounding. This is _you_. You’re looking at yourself.

Snake gets up in your periphery and you find yourself prepared to launch yourself at him if he comes near Moth. If he’s armed. From a long time ago Ocelot says _I would’ve stopped you if he hadn’t. I would’ve shot you._

He doesn’t, he ignores the two of you entirely to collect Miller. The other man struggles briefly, sopping with coffee and shaking like a leaf, but Snake just props him upright, tugs at the set of his tie a little.

“Shows over.” Ocelot snaps, and the silence in the cafeteria seems to jerk to attention. There’s the smell of something burning from the kitchen. “Harrier, clean yourself up and find a mop. You should know better.”

Harrier says _Yeth, thir,_ because he bit his tongue when Moth broke his nose. You know him enough to know he likes to complain, so the lack of any resistance shows how rattled he is. Nobody will look you in the eye as the crowd starts to try and disperse, an uneasy line forming like breakfast is supposed to carry on as usual.

Moth isn’t out entirely underneath you, but there’s a sluggishness to them that suggests it’s not just the beating they took, but processes inside stacking up, clashing against one another. Some blood bubbles up at their nose and mouth and you think maybe you should kill them right now, just to spare them whatever’s happening. Whatever will happen.

Ocelot grabs you by the back of your uniform and pulls you up and off, grumbling. “What a mess. Get them to the Medical platform, Civet.”

When you look at him, only at him, Ocelot meets your eyes. You feel like you must know what you look like, what he must be seeing again. “Sir. That…” _There was no point to that. There was no use for that._

“Having personal feelings about your comrades is one of the worst sins you can commit.”

You pull away in disgust and frustration, shutting him out, shutting out Snake and shutting out the way you can feel Miller’s eyes on you. You can collect Moth, although they’re heavier than they look, even boneless and limp in your arms. 

Their head lolls back and exposes their neck in a helpless way, and you can see the only parts of them that are trembling are their hands, split and kinked from punches thrown too hard. They’re still going. “On th’ day that… you were born… angels got together’n decide… decided…”

“To create a dream come true, right?” Nobody’s in your way as you carry them out of the caf. They don’t look at you. You don’t know if you’re helping by talking to them, and you’ve forgotten half of the words of that song already, but you know they’re only going to keep going until some internal condition is met. Maybe the end of the song. 

“Kaz,” Moth whimpers, and you wish you’d beat them unconscious.

You don’t really know what you’re supposed to do once Moth is installed in a bed. Canary sighs and makes small-talk he doesn’t expect you to reciprocate as he cleans up their face, sets and bandages what he can, takes their vitals, and buckles them into restraints.

That’s the part that shocks you, if any of it does. That Canary knows to do this. But of course he would. He’s been here as long as Miller, he must’ve seen every single miserable kitten that’s been made in every imaginable state of distress. Obvious.

You watch them doze, swollen eyes drifting open and shut and not seeing anything in particular. They don’t track motion when you wave your hand near their face, but there’s no telling what’s going on. You feel sorry for them in a kind of conceptual way—a bigger and louder part of you says they had it coming. They should’ve known better.

Word will have gotten around and nobody will expect you to be on time for your shift. They can hassle you about it if they want, but you need to sit down in the privacy of the room and just think.

So Snake knows trigger phrases. 

This, too, should’ve been obvious—Ocelot wouldn’t keep those from him. He wouldn’t keep the useful ones from him, anyway, you were _made_ for the Boss. You were hand-crafted for his purposes, Ocelot had told you that was your point the first time you’d met him properly, but—but it had been for the Boss. Not for Snake. The Boss would’ve never done that to Moth, but the Boss _had_ just done that to Moth.

And he wasn’t right to do it, it didn’t serve a purpose, but it doesn’t change that it happened. Doesn’t change that Moth did it. That the Boss did it. If the Boss did it, then it had to happen.

If Snake knows he can do this to the people hand-trained by Ocelot, and he’s doing it, he’s just testing. Sharp-stick biology in this petri dish Ocelot’s created specifically for his benefit. You have a hard time picturing bigger than that: you know you should care for Mother Base’s wellbeing as a whole, but a few individuals getting run into the ground wouldn’t send things grinding to a halt. Disrupting Miller and Ocelot’s lives isn’t a great idea, but they’re grown. They have to be able to keep going. You and Moth are nonessential personnel.

You wish you could shake answers out of either of them. Or just get close enough to thrash answers out of someone. Either would be good. It’s not like the solution to make things stop is to just give Snake something, it isn’t going to stop until he’s done being curious. 

Moth stirs, blearily looking out the window. Their voice is thick. “Did I hurt him?”

You roll your eyes. Still worried about _Kaz_. “His pride, maybe.” 

They hack something up, probably blood and phlegm. You feel a burning resentment towards them that hovers over you like a cloud. They shouldn’t be the person they are. They should’ve been washed out. Not even in the Ocelot Unit. Just the weakness, the honesty they display to you, someone who could be an enemy, is awful. It’s embarrassing.

“I just… I wanted—”

“That’s the _problem_ ,” you seethe, pushing yourself into their space until you block their view out the window, until your shadow covers their broken face. “You want. You can’t want, it creates a need, and it gives the world power over you. How did you get this far not _knowing_ that?”

Moth looks at you dumbly, what you can see of their eyes glassy with tears. You grab them by the shoulders, hard. Shaking them a little until they get words to answer you. “I don’t—I don’t know. I don’t know—”

“You forgot? You forgot _everything?_ ”

“It was just a couple of extra classes, it wasn’t—I didn’t—I didn’t make the cut, I—”

You slap them, pink drool speckling the side of the pillow, their face. Your face. You don’t know what else to do. They’re a pathetic, unformed thing in the bed, and you don’t want to face that you’re the same. You aren’t. You might have been created the same way but you aren’t, you are _not_ the same, you know better, but that’s not true in any way that matters. You have the same trigger phrases. It could’ve been you, humiliating Miller. The only difference between the outcomes is that Moth is still human enough to feel bad about it.

“Civet.” Canary says from the doorway. The disapproval is order enough, and you let Moth go. The clench of your hands stays in the fabric even when you turn and leave. There’s nothing to be gained by trying to wring something out of Moth that they don’t have.

It’s the end of breakfast service when you return to the caf, mostly everyone is gone, the line chefs are smoking in the corner and talking in low tones. Harrier is still there, nose bandaged up and the front of his shirt all bloody, mopping the last of the coffee off the floor. His face is pretty compared to Moth’s. He makes a wordless sound of confusion when you grab the mop out of his hand and snap the shaft of it over your knee, tossing the still-usable part at him. It splatters gray water everywhere and he yells after you as you take the rest of the handle with you, roughly the length of a baton.

You don’t have wonder where Ocelot is: Miller was supposed to be going over a proposed expansion to the standard AO in Afghanistan with the Support staff before it was made official, so Ocelot would be doing that. Never one to miss an opportunity to fill in for Miller, to smooth his mistakes, to pick up slack.

The Support meeting room is plastered in maps and filled with staff members who all look at you when you open the door, blinking owlishly in the dark. There’s an overhead projector going and Ocelot looks yellow and wan by its light. You can see the Boss sitting in the front row of the metal chairs, smoking. He hasn’t turned to look at you.

You walk into the room a few steps to leave the doorway clear. _“OUT!”_

Support streams past you like salmon in a river, chairs scraping and the odd sheet of scrap paper left in their wake. There’s some shoving to get out of the door at your back, but nobody touches you. Boots stampede down the hall and one thoughtful fool pulls the door shut behind him.

Ocelot puts his hands on his hips in the ensuing silence. “We’re doing this again, hm?”

“Apparently.”

“Oh?” Snake stands up, threading his way through chairs to Ocelot’s side. He seems to soak up all the light and reflect nothing back. “Does Civet have more history?”

“They prefer to be the sacrificial lamb. Probably feeling like Moth skipped ahead of them in line.”

You’ve got nothing to say to him. You speak to Snake, and they both know it. “You want to test Ocelot’s work, right? Don’t use a faulty model.”

His cigar coal brightens briefly as he takes in air. “Telling me to stay away from Moth, then?”

You put a boot up and kick the nearest folding metal chair away—it crashes into a couple more and makes a loud noise that doesn’t seem to bother anyone in the room. Makes you feel a little better, though. “I’m reminding you that I’m the only really functional one, and if you’re going to waste my time fucking around with anyone else, I have better things to do.”

It might not fool Ocelot—but even as you think that, it makes sense that it would. He would understand if you felt this way, because you think he feels this way, in the theoretical way Ocelot feels things. You think he’s wearing himself out with the intensity of it, but he probably likes it. He may not know anything else.

“I want you to look at me! I went through _everything_ for you, you look at _me!_ ” You pour all of your frustration into it, and hope it comes off right. This isn’t your specialty. It sticks in your throat that Moth would probably be better suited to this kind of emotional subterfuge, but if there’s shouting, you can probably blunder through it. If you can look at him for a moment and see someone else, you can do it.

The worst of needing to convince them seems over, so you kick aside another chair and ready your grip on the broom handle as you walk forward. It might not be fair to bring a weapon into this fight, but you’re past that. Anyway, it’s Big Boss. You deserve a leg up.

Snake doesn’t move into a ready stance, and that trips your danger sense even before there’s an old sensation of impending, unavoidable disaster. “Did Ocelot teach you how to play chess for this to work? _White always mates_.”

Your whole body gives out at once and you go down in an ungraceful heap, cracking your head on the floor. It hurts and it’s disorienting, but the pain isn’t blinding or clarifying like it should be. It feels distant, happening to someone else. You hear the mop handle rolling away, out of reach. 

Moving won’t work. It’s as if you’ve been stepped on so completely, caged by a tenseness in your own frame. The sensation is claustrophobic, but you can’t seem to work yourself into enough frenzy to move. There is just the trap of your own body and your brain struggling inside it.

Snake unfolds his arms and hunkers down by your face, turning it this way and that with no resistance. Your muscles aren’t locked for him, and his touch feels good. _Cheater_. This is cheating. You can still move your eyes and there’s some inconclusive twitches that make it through your body, but nothing seems to break the hold.

He grabs the back of your collar and drags you along the floor, yanking the condenser lens and arm of the projector down to shine on the floor as he passes. Ocelot follows, watching silently. You look at him and can’t feel betrayed, not really. It’s an inherited trait. Your inability to resist is his inability to deny the Boss anything.

Without much trouble, he drags you into the square of yellow light latticed by the delicate lace of topographical maps. Little red markers for enemy encampments, movements. At this distance, it’s all soft, out of focus. You feel that way, too, not fully connected to the way Snake pushes you over and drags you where he wants you, face slumped against the cold floor and ass in the air.  

Snake kneels back down and adjusts the way he wants you, reinforcing your posture by folding your legs up underneath yourself. Feels like he’s assembling a cairn, although his touch sends unusual warmth ricocheting around inside you. You’ve been like this long enough to know when something is an enforced reaction and when it’s your own, but you can’t find any useful espionage reason why Ocelot would want to be able to reduce you to a limp, blurry thing that craves touch.

“Moth’s got the same trigger. And Ocelot gave them all to Kaz. He knows everything I do about those.” Snake rubs your ass like a good luck charm. “How do you know he didn’t do this Moth, and they mistook it for being in love?”

That’s a nasty, unkind thought about Miller, but you’re more offended on Moth’s behalf. They’re stupid, but they aren’t ignorant. You don’t survive Ocelot’s training and come out unable to determine what you want, when you want it.

But they didn’t survive it. They forgot it.

Moth is both you and not you, existing in the same state. The same space. Superimposition.

“You can talk, Civet. Speak up.”

Can you? You don’t know if it’s wearing off or if his permission is what loosens your tongue. “… Already… knew how to play. Chess.”

“Did you ever win against Ocelot?”

“No.”

“Me neither. He cheats.” Snake slaps your butt, but it’s more jovial than punishing. “Ready to tap out?”

“Ready to start.” You hate that it’s true, but you understand this. You’re good at this. If he understood anything about you, he’d leave you alone if he really wanted you to hurt. He’d deny you this experiment.

Maybe, you think, wearily, he doesn’t care. Maybe this isn’t about your suffering or your punishment, but an elaborate play set up to wear Ocelot down, and you’re just a tool. Moth was just a plot device. Ocelot deserves that, but Moth didn’t. Miller probably didn’t. And you shouldn’t indulge it, even if it serves your own unfortunate ends.

“Ocelot, give me your belt.”

“Do you want me to—”

“I told you what I want.”

You feel like you can hear the sigh Ocelot swallowed, and despite yourself, there’s still some heat to be had at the jingling of his belt. You know the buckle, you know the width of the leather strap, better than you know any of your own clothes.

Snake drags your left hand up and out, briefly running a thumb over the divot in your skin of an old injury. He lays it flat on the floor before sealing his boot over your palm, and you laugh hoarsely. Ocelot really did give him _everything_. He drags your trousers off the bend of your hips with enough force to pop the teeth of the zipper, exposing you to the air, all the way to your knees. 

The buckle jingles again and you think about Ocelot holding his holstered revolvers like two downed birds and watching the Boss crack his belt across your thighs.

He doesn’t start out looking to find your tolerance level, you can feel his full strength going into it. And the next. And the next. Your body shakes of its own accord and you can feel the welts rising, even hot blood drawn in a few spots. The snap of the leather and the way your body is tuned for the next strike, waiting in an electric frenzy of pain and adrenaline—these sorts of things shouldn’t be what you want from him, but they are.

His cigar has nowhere else to go in the room and hangs thick around you. The taste gets into your mouth when your jaw drops, body rocking forward in the echo of pleasure. Time spools strangely and you float in the impression that something is taking its time fucking you, moving your body how it wants, pulling all your attention to your body and its cries.

You only hear your own ragged breathing when sound returns, the spell broken by the sound of the Boss. “How many, Ocelot?”

“Twenty-five, Boss.”

“Hm. Felt like less.” His hand is enormous and burns on your raw skin. “What do you think, Civet?”

“Huh?” Your face is slippery against the floor. “I fell asleep.”

You get ten more for that, with the buckled end. The injuries it snatches out of your thighs and ass bleed freely and it snatches a few reluctant curses out of you, despite your best efforts. It’s either that or risk biting yourself too hard.

When he lifts his boot off your hand and toes you onto your back, you see for a moment that your palm is soaked in blood, shiny and warm. It’s gone when you blink, but it doesn’t frighten you more than anything else you’ve seen.

Snake puts the heel of another boot on the already-broken zipper of your uniform and tugs down until they’re bunched at your calves. The floor is gritty agony on your behind, freezing cold. If you move a hand lower, you can feel blood pooling up underneath you. Snake hums absently like a concrete mixer while he unlaces one of your boots, tossing it off into the darkness. The belt went that way not long ago, outside of the single square of yellow light that describes what you can see.

It’s _not_ absent humming, and when he’s done yanking your pants off one leg, you’ve got enough bile saved to kick at him. It’s weak and he just grabs your ankle, setting it on his shoulder as if for safe keeping. In bad taste, bringing up poor Moth when you’re trying to get fucked. Close to you, indeed.

“Ocelot didn’t do this, did he.” Snake says, teeth clamped around his cigar. You can’t look away, even when you know he’s taking himself out of his pants, settling in between your legs. “The last time you got a bad idea on someone else’s behalf?”

“No,” you say, thickly. Trying to swallow before you drool on yourself. “But he used lube.”

“Yeah, well, he spoils you.”

Even for all that, he still doesn’t seat himself more roughly inside you than he needs to. The steady pressure of him even when you buck leaves you nowhere to go to escape, and still it just takes one big hand on your hips to keep you in place. Snake plumes smoke out in a deep groan, and you hear Ocelot say _Boss_ in the darkness, orbiting and lost. 

There’s nothing you can do but lay there, impaled and sweating, but Snake isn’t lost in the moment long. The metallic snick noise of a black combat knife—the black knife, you know, in an animal moment of fear, that Ocelot had, there’s no other one it could be. Your guts jump when he lowers it to the edge of your uniform, and with the same kind of decisive movement, puts the blade’s edge to your clothes and cuts them open.

The projector’s lamp is hot and bright reflecting the map onto your bodies, pouring mountains over your bruised thighs, valleys on the exposed planes of your chest. The maps swim over you when Snake starts to move, absolutely no preamble to the choppy tide of your hips. Every touch and reverberation of motion makes your thighs ache, and he sinks both hands over the checkering of wounds on your ass, and _that_ finally makes you squirm and cry out.

He fucks like a machine, and the consistency of it might make you come—it’s impossible to know, everything slurred up so heavily with pain. It could take forever, it could’ve been over in an instant, it doesn’t really matter. Your chest is still heaving like bellows stoking a fire when he finishes, very much inside you. There’s cigar ash in the curve of your collarbone.

Snake sits back on his haunches and the two of you glare at each other. If he wants more, all you can do is lie there and take it, paralyzed from exhaustion. Doesn’t need a code phrase. You could be up for it, honestly. Let this go as badly as it needs to, see how far he’ll push. “Ocelot?”

“Yes, Boss.”

There’s no way he misses you licking your lips, the implicit dare. Resists it anyway. “Clean them up.”

Ocelot’s spurs jingle. Snake pushes himself off the floor with a sigh and a stretch, and he vanishes outside of the projector’s light, into the darkness. Ocelot emerges in his place, long where the Boss was broad, focused where he was vague. He drags the scarf off his neck and bunches it up in a hand as he kneels, taking the Boss’s place. 

A metal chair scrapes on the floor and squeaks as weight is settled onto it. “With your _mouth_ , Adam.” 

You’re dazed, but you’re not that out of it. Ocelot has a name? A _human_ name? He looks just as shocked as you to hear it, gloves tight on balled fists resting against his thighs. The scarf is a red exclamation point. “Boss.” 

“You don’t have to,” Snake says, and his voice bounces around too much for you to pinpoint where he is by that alone. All you’ve got is the cigar’s glowing coal, a single red eye. “I thought you might enjoy it, since that’s all you’re going to get from me for a while.”

A laugh flutters out of you— _that’s_ cold. Ocelot’s going to all this trouble and he still isn’t getting what he wants? Cruel. You speak up to maybe rub salt in the wounds or advocate on his behalf when Ocelot seals his mouth against you and begins licking come out of where Snake left it.

Your whole body jerks on the floor and you make a noise you haven’t heard out of yourself in a long, long time. Ocelot grabs your thighs and holds them down, apart, where he wants them until he can trust you not to thrash around. His moustache against your skin is wiry and uncomfortable, but it’s nothing compared to his tongue, his lips, eventually even his gloved fingers, scooping into you hot and slick with spit. 

Voice clawing at your throat, you come into his mouth with a frightening intensity, but he doesn’t stop. He moves for the cum that made it down your thighs, pushing your leg up to get at it.

Snake makes a thoughtful noise. “Looks like he didn’t do that, either.”

“Uh-uh—” Ocelot’s tongue dips into a raw furrow left by the belt buckle and your nails scratch helplessly on the floor, back arching.

“Never?” The Boss huffs. “Lazy." 

Ocelot sits back on his heels, chin bright with spit. There’s blood on his lips too, it’s _your_ blood. You picture yourself reaching for him, only for him to slap the hand away. It’s better not to press your luck. You don’t know what you’d want from him anyway.

Snake kicks at the cord for the projector and it hums down into darkness, leaving you struggling to adjust to it. Your eyes are ready to work before the rest of you is, and it takes a long time for your brain to resolve the sight of the Boss seated nearby, knees wide but otherwise watching calmly.

He makes a low noise to Ocelot, who drops to his knees beside the chair. He looks flushed and distant when the Boss takes his jaw in hand, like he’s examining Ocelot’s efforts. Familiar. You twist and turn weakly like an overturned beetle, but before long you can drag your pants up, although your shirt and jacket are lost causes. Requisitions is going to love hearing your latest excuse.

You think about trying to look for your lost boot when Snake waves you off. “Scram, Civet.”

Standing up is hard when your blood seems to be sloshing around your body like a half-empty bottle. “Was this what you wanted to talk about, sir?”

“You know it’s not. Get going.”

You are too tired and entirely too jaded to be scared of what happens if you don’t, but further energy to spite him has to be focused into staggering off, getting a practical gait back again. Your legs are on fire, but at least nobody’s waiting in the hall for you. Seems like Support can be tactful when they need to be.

The image of Ocelot on his knees beside him chases you out of the darkness. Outside, the wind is still salty, the sun is brighter than ever, but you’re whole. Aware of who and where you are. _Scram. What a bastard._

You lean against a railing and rub your face, trying to work in the warmth of the air to your skin. It was what you wanted, but it didn’t leave you with an answer of what to do next. Not that you really need one. You know what you have to do, even if it’s embarrassingly basic. You have to treat your wounds, get back on your feet, rest. Before you can decide what to do next.

You think about hobbling to Medical and getting fussed over within earshot of Moth, and it turns your stomach so completely that you vomit off the side of the platform.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can't believe we're already at the halfway point! :') Got those long chapter hours coming up.  
> As always, thank you so much for reading! See you Sunday!


	4. LAST KISS

> **IF YOU'RE SMART, YOU WATCH**
> 
> **FOR CHANGES IN COLOR.**
> 
> **THIS CAN APPLY TO SEEING THAT**
> 
> **FRUIT IS RIPE OR NOTICING THE FLUSH**
> 
> **THAT GOES WITH FEVER, DRUNKENNESS,**
> 
> **[OR FURY.](https://open.spotify.com/user/dangerdagner/playlist/6IdRdyhu9yhgYnI0Wmwd4D?si=Yb5Y9eu4S82c79Bmhs87Ug) **

 

 

 

 

 

 

There’s nothing else to do but go to work. Go to your shifts. You find excuses to stand, spend your breaks stretching and cussing, get used to the awkward tango of changing bandages on a part of your body you can’t easily see.

Time passes. The breakfast ordeal swept over Mother Base like a head cold and left as much ill will in its wake. You’ve heard people saying they’d punch Moth if they saw them. Oughta get kicked off the base, fucking around with the Commander like that. He doesn’t deserve that, he’s been through enough.

You’re going through the motions of daily life, and the people who know you know that it’s not going to last. Rhino keeps trekking all the way from across the damn base to eat lunch with you, like you need someone to remind you to eat. (You don’t. You eat three meals a day and sleep eight hours without waking.) Shrew says even less to you than normal, but it’s a relief. You don’t want to infect him with whatever’s gestating inside you.

The day outside is hot and too bright when you limp into the bathroom. It’s between shifts, and the only other staff in there clear out when they see it’s you. _That’s_ a weird feeling, but you probably should’ve expected as much when you kicked down Support’s door like you did.

It suits you fine, though. You can turn the lights down to the auxiliary level and rub cold water over your face in peace.

Somebody you knew once carried around tape and gauze just on principle, but you feel like a cheap imitation when you fish them out of your own pockets. You should probably lock the door before you drop your pants and start easing off bandages, but it’s steps that would take you away from where you can safely lean on the sink.

Squares and strips of gauze hold the shape of your legs as you let them drop to the floor like orange peels. Shedding. It stings, everything stings, the air feels nice but you can’t sit here with your ass out forever. Your muscles and bruises ache on the same constant background radiation level of discomfort, punctuated by real pain when you move knitting skin or muscle.

Light stains the room as the door opens briefly, letting someone in before it shuts again. You’re gonna throw your fucking iDroid at him if it’s Ibex trying to score points.

It’s not Ibex, of course. It’s Moth, because who else would it be.

You’re disgusted at yourself for the brief moment of worry, of thinking they’re here to even things out and feeling anything other than readiness for it. “What do _you_ want?” 

Moth’s face looks like your ass in some ways, in the ugly stages of healing. Or maybe that’s just how they are, now. A rolled up sleeve reveals a spot where an IV might have been, and you have to wonder what the reconstructive surgery program is like in the middle of the ocean with a bunch of grizzled veterans. You don’t know if they’re the type to scar easily, or what they’ll look like if they do.

Most of it’s your fault. You’ve got matching bruises and cuts on your hands. Mirrored hairline fractures in your bones. There’s a little that’s Miller’s fault, he did break a mug on them, but you think they’d probably rather gnaw rust off the struts than blame him for anything.

Your ugly tone hangs around like cigar smoke, and that thought makes you shake your head, turn away from them and back to the mirror. “Sorry.”

They’re a dark shape in the view behind you, but it doesn’t feel like a threat. You don’t see the gears turning in their head but you know they’re going: they’re a sealed-up watch, internal mechanisms ticking away until they speak. “The Boss did that to you.”

What do they know about Ocelot that they think he wouldn’t have done it? Because he would’ve. He volunteered. How did they know it was the Boss? “I asked for it.” 

“Let me help.”

You’re not sure you really want Moth near your wounds, but you deserve it if they decide to be mean. “You don’t have to.”

Moth doesn’t answer, because it wasn’t a thing you needed to say. They know they don’t have to.

They’re quiet while they work. Methodically swabbing water to clean cuts, patting you dry. It’s not gentle, but it’s efficient. It’s fair. They aren’t scared of touching your body, but don’t seem particularly interested in it. Maybe it feels like an extension of their own in some way. That’s what they feel like to _you_.

They stand up and reach past you to get the medical tape and gauze from where you’d left them on the sink counter. You try to catch their eye in the mirror, but they’re focused on the task. The silence feels ungrateful on your behalf, and you think of how they would always greet you. Try to help out. “How are you?” You wince as soon as it’s out of your mouth.

“Requesting a transfer to the Atlantic FOB.”

You can’t blame them. The boys up there are too busy being cold to care much about rumors, even from Mother Base itself. The thought of that request landing on Miller’s desk fills you with some unknown sensation. “I meant your face.”

They’re gentle when they lay gauze over the places that need it most, the tape roll making a _squrr_ noise as they seal the bandage down. “I’d request a transfer for that too, if I could.”

“It’ll be okay. Some people look better roughed up.” Your mouth is still open to say _Like the Boss, right?_ But you would only be half correct.

Moth stands up and back and gives you a look in the mirror like you’ve just spat at them, eyes flicking up and down the length of you like they’re reappraising what you are. “You think I care about that right now?”

Yeah, you’d be pissed if somebody had said that to you, too. It doesn’t matter what you look like as long as you can be a good Diamond Dog. It just hadn’t occurred to you that Moth would react the same way, or at least audibly so. “You’re different.”

“Ocelot uses only what’s already inside of you. Whatever he did to… for making it so I didn’t remember, it’s _really_ mine, because it’s breaking down. Rotting.”

You can’t imagine what that’s like, and that scares you in an unusual way. You can imagine a lot of what comprises Moth—or you thought you could, because you should’ve been made of the same stuff. The same methods, the same components. You cannot imagine the self you live in now resurfacing underneath someone else, filling out broken spaces, bleeding into who you thought you were. Having to deal with what Ocelot made in a matter of days, instead of months. Alone.

Your hands clench and unclench. You don’t want to show them what bothers you, but it might be necessary. “Are you going to kill yourself?”

“Not unless somebody tells me to.” The casual way they say that is irritating. You would’ve liked them to take your question more seriously, to display some sign of the person they were before. But even though they say it flippantly, you both live in a world where it’s possible. Even likely, if things keep on the way they have been.

You don’t think the Boss would throw away the life of a soldier like that—but, do they even read as a soldier to him? Or just a knockoff Ocelot? You know what you want to say to them, what you _have_ to say to them, but it’s such an exposure. Such a risk. 

“I don’t think the Boss exists. The one we remember.” You say it as you need to take in another breath, and it feels like a hand in your guts, grabbing and wringing instead of just exploring. “I only met him after I met Ocelot. At the start. I think it was what he told us to see, to hear. To convince us that he was worth… fighting for. The one I see now isn’t.” 

This is, inherently, unthinkable. This is the worst thoughtcrime imaginable. When the concept had hit you as you lay in your bunk you had kicked the wall with both feet, as if you could exorcise the thing that had entered uninvited. It _hurt_.

You want to be wrong. But you haven’t seen your Boss since the Boss—it all just _blurs_. Would this Boss have held you gently when you couldn’t stand? Was it him? Was that someone else? Did that Boss, the one you guarded in your heart like a candle flame, really exist? Where was he? If he was real, why didn’t he help? Why was Moth standing there with a busted face and a broken heart, if the Boss you loved was real?

The two of you are sitting at the feet of the highest treason possible, alone together in the bathroom of all places. Your pants around your ankles, since that seems to be your dharma.

“What are you going to do about it?” Moth asks. Not implicating themselves. Not agreeing. But not disagreeing. A liminal person.

“I don’t know.” You shake your head, hanging it. Looking at your boots on the tile. The forbidden sprout of whatever it is you’ve spoken into existence is inside you, but you don’t know what to do for it. You don’t know what it eats, what it needs, what you should do with it.

Moth smooths a hand over the bandages, making sure the edges are flat, taped well. They lift your belt and trousers with it, coming close enough for their breath to stir at the back of your neck, automatically redoing your fly, buckling your belt for you. Not too tight.

They pick up your old bandages, stiff with blood and serous fluid, and throw them away in the trash can. The hinge of the lid squeaks. “I do.”

It feels like a slap. “You’ve thought about—?”

“I think about a lot of things,” Moth replies, and it’s stupid, but it hadn’t occurred to you that they would consider treason. Resistance. They always struck you as a victim. You had made them a victim and hated them for it.

Maybe it’s because it’s finally showing through, like bones rising up through skin as a corpse decomposes, but you want to think you see what Ocelot saw in them. They look very mild for being ready to step into a conspiracy with you. Like someone talking about accounting. A balancing of the books. Becoming two people with a single secret, alone in the middle of the ocean. One person?

“Do you want to go with me? To the…” To where? It feels like it rises up out of you unbidden, but you know that Ocelot didn’t sink it within you. It’s his language, but it’s your meaning. “To the place where there’s no darkness?”

“Civet,” Moth says, with a smile that only works on one half of their face. Fond exasperation underneath bandages and bruises. “That implies we weren’t already there.”

 

 

You have to strike an equilibrium between clandestine bathroom meetings and faithfully going to work, so you ask your team lead for afternoons off. He’s seen your record, he knows you were involved in the Breakfast Ordeal, and you’ve been surly enough that he doesn’t mind agreeing as long as you promise to visit the Med platform. He’s the type to follow up, so you do stop by and waste Sunny Kitten’s time filling out paper questionnaires about your mood and answering PTSD-screening questions with single words. That ship, you would like to say to her tired frown, has kinda sailed.

Anyway, with free time, you return to your roots. You relearn the base, the way it creaks, the way it smells. The way air circulates through pipes, the directions rainwater falls. Where it’s easy to hide. You shadow Rhino for a day doing Base Dev work until Paper Hawk yells at you to stop bothering him. 

Moth gets cooped up in Medical again at some point for more surgery, but you don’t feel the loss keenly. You don’t really need to talk to them, but you feel aware of their presence at the edge of your senses at all times. A secondary point on a blank map.

You scale all the way up to the high, blinding spaces where there’s nothing but the base under you and the wind all around. The sun on the water, the flattest plains in the world. Sometimes Quiet will join you in the same way a cat will sit in a doorway and stare. You’re both doing your own things.

You’re seized often by the need to ask Quiet what she thinks—what does she think of the Boss, who does she see? Which one is real to her eyesight, the closest thing to objective truth? You feel in your gut there are only two answers: either this Boss is the only Boss there’s ever been, or your Boss has left you to this one. Both are real until one is disproven, unfortunately, and you’ve stopped trying to disentangle things.

In the same way that the only thing you care about is him, you don’t care about him very much at all. The decision has been made.

That’s what gets you following him. There’s hardly anywhere anyone can go on base that you can’t follow, and it’s not like he tries to hide his movements during daylight hours. There’s enough busy work around that you don’t have to always hide, and sometimes he’ll catch your eye, nod like you’re friends. Ocelot is still always with him, looking peaky but attentive.

He’s still a human, more or less. He has to occupy space. He has to eat, and he does. Constantly. He sweats, he breathes, he smokes cigars. He has weight and depth and height. Volume.

There are inconsistent hours very late and very early where these qualities get fuzzy. The Boss is difficult to track when he moves quietly, but he never sleeps for long, and always prowls around before he returns to Ocelot’s quarters. There are a few circuits he likes, wears down like game trails, but he doesn’t relax. If he notices you, he doesn’t seem to take your presence personally.  

It’s strange, tailing him the way he must have tailed you. Or maybe that’s arrogant, and you were just unintentionally near him when he was scouting the base. Either way, you see how he avoids security cameras, steps quietly, sinks deep into shadow and moves within them. He’s elegant in the way of a natural predator, and you learn a lot just watching. Ocelot knows the value of stealth, but he never stressed it like this.

Part of you is hoping you’ll see him do something that will change your mind, convince you he’s something you can weather or understand. He’s nice enough to average soldiers, ready to spar at a moment’s notice, but he hits too hard. He throws roughly, and it doesn’t seem like they learn much from it. You follow him all the way to the Animal Conservation platform one night and wait with a kind of hungry anticipation for him to do something unspeakable, but he seems bored by the prospect of animals in cages. He’s still learning how the base functions as a whole, seems uninterested in the details and more interested in the larger mechanisms of it as a fortress.

Shrew is the only one you can train with anymore—the Combat guys will talk too much if you approach them, and the rest of the Ocelot Unit is, for lack of a better word, catty. They’d snitch on you in a heartbeat, thinking you’re just a lonely washout trying to get Ocelot’s attention again. You don’t really care if Ocelot knows you’re training, there’s never been a time when you _aren’t_ training, but you like the time with Shrew. The silence suits the both of you, and he’s learned new tricks since your days with him.

He knows you well enough to know that you don’t want a warning for whatever stupid thing you’re planning next, just a blessing. He’ll tell Rhino one way or another if you end up dead.

There’s no point where you have to hurry to make everything come together. You’ve picked up and stored every piece of what you needed from the long, nameless days before now. The nice part is you aren’t doing it alone: there are Diamond Dogs happy to help you tinker with the cassette players, soldering bits together and explaining patiently the honestly, pretty _basic_ science, Civet, this is easy. You don’t have anything more challenging? What’s this for, anyway—a prank?

In a way, yeah.

Well, if Miller busts you, I didn’t help, okay?

That brings into sharp relief how far you are off the beaten path. You know Miller would throw you in the brig if he found you spelunking through the air vents of Mother Base, pen light in your mouth and whole body sweating against the long stretches of aluminum metal. All he can do is restrict where your body can move, and he has to know it by now. There are no more effective punishments for you.

By the time you’re done, you almost want to leave the pieces where you’ve left them. You stare up at the ceiling as you lay in your bunk and think about just rolling over and going back to sleep. Waking up and working a full day tomorrow, no half-shifts. Returning to the Mother Base that’s a city instead of a jungle.

Ocelot had once accused you of not having enough of a survival instinct, and you wonder if he was right. If you only had two ways of feeling that: the desperation of the moment or the long, camouflaged reasoning that it won’t change anything. You’ll die and everything will be over. What’s the point of it? You could sneak back into the vents, dismantle the timers that will automatically activate regardless of how you feel.

There are reasons. They’re small. Moth’s face might not ever be pretty enough for undercover work again. You’ve already spent the money buying cassette tapes. The cigar smell is starting to permeate everywhere on base. They are very small reasons, and you’ll do it because you can.

Because you want to see what will happen.

 

 

 

Your supervisor puts you in charge of Moth’s new group of Diamond Dogs, the ones going through basic and physical conditioning. Last week it was Devil Raptor, so they’re just rotating instructors until… what?

It doesn’t really matter to you. It’s an easy job, herding newbies. They come in two flavors: anxious to please and already confident. Confident ones give you looks like they want to see why you should be the one in charge, knowing that never ends well in the movies but this is real life, they’re real heroes. It’d end differently. (It would not end differently.)

Anyway, you look over the drill sheets and blow the whistle and hold your stopwatch. You set up a chair to sit on like a folding metal throne and grin at them from behind your sunglasses as they do endless reps, playing at being your memory of Ocelot. It’s a nice perspective, looking down at obedient bodies and thinking that maybe the brains are rebelling. Not enough to make any of them actually swing at you yet, although you don’t think you’d mind that.

Roaring Centipede shows up halfway through the next set, gawking good-naturedly and carrying a boombox on his shoulder—the real expensive, modern kind. It’s probably only a third or a quarter his, but he’s certainly free with it: you wave him over and conspire for a moment, eventually slotting in one of your cassettes.

You think you’ve got it loud enough when Centipede _really_ cranks it, before settling back to lean against your knee and watch the boys perk up. It’s a little morale boost: the day had been long and extraordinarily boring, and something about music coupled with the end in sight puts a little more energy back into your drooping daisies.

“Is this early Stones?” Centipede asks for a moment. “I didn’t know you were into retro stuff, Civet.”

“You gotta have an appreciation for the classics.”

The tape goes on and the reps stack up. You see the Boss pass by on one of the catwalks, but keep your face pointed at the trainees even as your eyes track him from behind the shades. Centipede waves at him. 

 

 

 

 

_“You’re listening to WU-84, Mother Base’s premiere ‘if you don’t ask me to fund it I won’t shut it down’ radio station, thank you as always, Commander Miller. It’s about ten minutes to midnight and we’re working through the backlog of requested songs right now, since I can’t sleep, and apparently, neither can you.”_

_“I’m excited to play the next request for you, since I think it was supposed to be a challenge: ‘Hey Little Cobra,’ by the Rip Chords—is someone running an illicit hot rod circuit on Mother Base? Maybe you thought we couldn’t find this old chestnut, but joke’s on you: we work with some of the most obsessive and detail-oriented minds on the planet, so there was no way we wouldn’t come up with it.”_

 

 

 

 

 

Glacier Harrier is still stuck on caf clean-up detail, although his nose looks better. A little crooked in a rugged way, so he’s probably not too broken up about it. You linger after dinner service while the line chefs eat and smoke in the corner and offer to help him out—there’s a moment when you approach that he draws the mop in towards himself like you might reach out and break it again, and he laughs when he realizes he’d done it. You laugh too, and find a spare mop in the supply closets.

While you’re back there, you run into the speaker system hooked up for the caf, mostly used for announcements. Nobody left in the mess hall complains when you put something on, and Harrier smiles at you with relief—there’s been less music on base lately. Pequod had stopped playing anything some time ago, so there’s something exotic about hearing a song loud again.

Harrier cocks his head at you when you return, while you innocently slosh your mop around in the bucket. “Is this Chad and Jeremy?”

“Peter and Gordon, actually.”

“Can’t say I miss that trend. Did everyone forget their last names in the sixties?”

You can’t say, but they definitely left the twist there, and that doesn’t stop Harrier. It’s a fun song, and the line cooks whistle at you both encouragingly, although grooving a little doesn’t really help the efficiency of your mopping. But it’s a relief to dance, although you get a little pang of déjà vu when Harrier looks over your shoulder and straightens up.

It’s the Boss, skulking in through one set of doors and looking around like he’d been expecting to see someone else. You can’t remember noticing him at dinner service. You had looked. “You want something to eat, Boss?” 

“Huh? No.”

“ _No?_ ” Harrier echoes disbelievingly, and you look at him with a new appreciation.

“No appetite,” The Boss grunts, continuing on and out through another set of doors across the hall. He’s gone in a moment, leaving only cigar flavored air behind.

 

 

 

 

 

 

_“It’s still WU-84, listeners, in this lonely morning hour. What are you doing up? I hope it’s just us night shift owls, and nobody having trouble sleeping. The ocean’s still and calm out there, although it’s supposed to be hot again tomorrow.”_

_“You know, Commander Miller told me once that there’s this whole region around the earth where tropical winds interact strangely, keeps things warm and flat and hard to sail through. That’s where we get the word ‘doldrums.’”_

_“Okay, coming up it’s the Cavaliers—excuse me, J. Frank Wilson… and the Cavaliers, with ‘Last Kiss.’ More requests after that, so stay tuned or get to sleeping.”_

 

 

 

 

 

 

When you agree to eat your lunch with Ibex at the range, you make him swear it’s not a date, and he does. He laughs about that too, which you appreciate. There’s something easier about him these days, like he’s adjusting to a new squad dynamic, or maybe he got good news from home.

The range is a garbage place for conversation, but there are nice catwalks where you can sit in the shade and hang your legs off the edge, swing your boots in space. It’s dumb on your part and probably distracting for those practicing down below, but you’ve inherited Ocelot’s belief that one should be able to focus past minor inconveniences.

Ibex seems to be studying you, and between the snaps of gunshots he explains that he hasn’t stopped thinking about the ass-kicking he got from you so long ago. He’s puzzled about why you spent all that time with Ocelot and then returned to regular duties—would you be interested in joining his team? They’re still looking to replace Hound.

You hear yourself say yeah, maybe, with more thought spared for that than you would’ve initially given to it. It might be nice to stretch your wings, make use of yourself. Travel the world, kill people in new and exotic places. It’s nice to entertain the idea of a future.

It looks like a remedial class down below, Screaming Wallaby pacing up and down the lanes, adjusting the set of shoulders or hips. The radio is on, surprisingly—you would’ve thought she’s the type to think it’s wasteful to have a stereo going at a range where everyone has ear protectors on, but you’ve heard she has a thing for one of the radio hosts. Maybe that’s how she’s getting through the crushing boredom of extra drills.

The only lane she doesn’t visit is the one farthest away from the entrance, where the Boss is. The way he fires is so completely different from the others: practiced, mechanical, it looks as automatic as walking. The focus on his face is beyond what he should need for this, and you point him out to Ibex.

Ibex sighs. “I bet Wallaby wishes the Boss would help out. He came by during CQC drills with that new recruit batch yesterday.”

“You’re dealing with them now?”

“Yeah, they’re not so bad.”

“Did he teach them anything?”

“How to get their asses kicked, I guess. Get this, though: Running Serpent got in a hit.”

You watch the Boss reload, fire through the clip, eject, reload. The target at the end is mostly hole. “Seriously?”

“Yeah. I kinda thought… I dunno. I know the Boss just wants us to be the best, but I was worried for Serpent for a minute. He looked at her like he had no idea who she was. Like it wouldn’t matter after he was done with her.”

Ibex sounds unhappy about it, but you can’t tell if this is general unease or some kind of attempt to communicate with you about a larger problem. The thought that Ibex is feeling doubt about the Boss and trying obliquely to reach out to you about it, to see if you feel the same way, is startling. Kind of touching. The radio bounces out some patter before the next song starts up, and you only hear the noise of it, not the words.

The both of you straighten up sharply as something in the pitch of the shots change, the way the sounds echo off the walls of the range. Wallaby has her arm flung out, frozen in the act of dragging some of the other soldiers back and out of the way, like she can hold them back in their seat during a car accident. The Boss had turned and shot the radio in one elegant motion, the speakers planted around the range hiccupping once before static. The weight of his gaze is somehow worse than being at the end of his gun, and you look at the soldiers shrink back as he returns to his lane. Ejects an empty clip, reloads, resumes.

“What the hell was that?” Ibex asks.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're in the home stretch! Next update is Tuesday, gear up for a final boss fight! ;)


	5. HOUSE OF THE RISING SUN

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're in the home stretch!

 

> **EVEN WITH YOUR EYES CLOSED**
> 
> **YOU CAN SEE SOMEONE APPROACHING.**
> 
> **HIS SHADOW SHOWS ON**
> 
> **THE INSIDE OF YOUR EYELIDS.**  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Room 101 is generally locked, and requires XO clearance to enter even when it’s not in use.

That’s for people who haven’t spent as much time as you have in the vents. In this dark heart of Mother Base, all you can think about is that one scene in _Alien_. You’re not sure if you’re supposed to be the guy with the flamethrower or the dot on the screen getting closer. If nothing else, after all this shakes out Miller will have a wonderful time with Security. Figuring out how to keep enterprising little traitors like you out of the tubes. 

It’s empty and black when you get to the room proper, no red auxiliary lights. You leave the grate off the vent entrance, just in case. The smell seems different every time you’ve been here, and today it’s nothing but stuffy air and old cleaning product. The environment is weirdly tame when it’s just you. You know there’s no cameras, although the interior booth would have recording equipment available.

It took you less time to get there than you’d anticipated, so you familiarize yourself with the room. It’s an exotic thing to be in a space you don’t know inside and out, so you try to imagine yourself as a gas. Expanding until you fill this container. 

That’s a little dreamy, so you give up quickly and set up the speakers you’d dragged through the vents, suspending one from rafters, pushing the other into a deep corner behind a tool bench. Threading the necessary cables around, you wouldn’t know where the speakers were unless you were looking for them, or if the lights were on. The setup is such that when you finally put music through them, you can’t locate them based on location alone. Sound bounces around, filling up the room better than you ever could.

This is your last song from the list, the Gale Garnett one. It manages to sound good even in Room 101, which you still have a hard time believing is just a room. Even though it’s yours, specifically your space. Home turf. You check your watch and crank up the volume until you can feel the bass through the floor when you sit down. There’s soundproofing in here, but not enough to keep it in. Those sweet flutes will run out over the deck like an overflowing sink, harmonica sawing through the night air. It’s late. Sleeping Dogs wouldn’t notice, but if you were awake, if you couldn’t sleep, you might find your way here.

You don’t know how many times the song loops: you hear it, but you don’t hear it. The repetition should grate on you, but your sense of time is so melted, it barely registers. You can hold onto it and let it run through your fingers as much as you need to. Like water or an endless loop of silk. 

The hatch creaks open and shuts again quickly, and you don’t even need to smell the cigar to tell it’s him. “Hi, Boss.”

“I should’ve known it was you.” He has to raise his voice a little to either hear himself or make it reach you. “Figures it’d come back to Ocelot.”

“What do you mean, sir?” You frown. Petulant. Head tilt.

“The music. Your little mix tape.”

“There’s no music, Boss.” You shake your head, and it’s easy to compose your face how you need it, because you’re telling the truth, even though you’re lying. You hear everything. You don’t hear the music.

Maybe it’s something in the way you say it, or maybe he thinks you’re mocking him and a lot of sleepless nights are catching up. The way he settles into forward motion and walks towards you almost makes you shiver, because the way he looks is the way you feel. Fists at the ready, determined to either break the rock or break on the rock. “You really don’t know when to quit, Civet.” 

Well, yeah. You blow him a kiss.

It’s still a steady, measured first punch. He isn’t frustrated enough to get sloppy—you don’t even really know if getting sloppy is something he’s capable of. You’re gonna find out, one way or another. You’re in good shape, you’re well-rested, you know the room. It’s just the two of you, and Big Boss is still finding out who you are. 

The fight seems mostly about technique, there’s the quality of a dance to it. He’s very good, and he has years, maybe even a lifetime of experience on you. But this is the first time he’s actually fought you fair and square, and he must be taking Ocelot’s training seriously. That’s what he thinks you are, after all: an extension of Ocelot.

You fight like him, but not enough that he can predict you. He falls for feints more than you might think. The key, you’ve realized, is not to give him enough time or space to really get a hold on you. He’s far and away stronger than you’ll ever be, but if you twist out of the start of holds or grapples, keep your guard up and your feet moving, you can keep going. 

You lose one hand as he clamps a hand around your wrist, and he manages to grab the other before you can elbow him in the face, but it leaves you in a deadlock. You long ago adjusted enough to see him clearly in the darkness, and you have the luxury of being able to focus your gaze on his one eye. You can smell his sweat, his scent like he needs a shower he hasn’t taken for days. Desperation. You could lick his face at this range.

“I tossed the room.” The Boss snarls. His breath is humid. “Is the cassette player in the vents?”

“I’d _never_ enter a commanding officer’s quarters without being invited, sir,” you say, pushing as much fake innocence into it as you can, delighted that he has to ask. That he needs to know where the music has been coming from for days. _Weeks_. Every night on a random timer, the same tape, the same songs, the same year. Even if he’d never heard them before, you imagine they’re scalding enough by now.

You love that image of him, trying to sleep and waking up to a handful of songs he would’ve heard a long time ago. Probably when he was happier, if he was ever happy. You hope he loved hearing those songs when he did, because you want them to burn at him like peroxide now. Big Boss, tearing his room apart looking for your little cassette player. Unable to go anywhere on base fully away from the noise. Your time capsules.

He shoves forward and you won’t last trying to hold him back, so you brace yourself on his thighs, pushing with your legs to pry him off. Instead of letting go, he doubles down and slams the both of you onto the floor, and this, you know, is bad. He pushes down with his full weight, boots scraped and bracing against the floor like he can crush your own arms into your ribcage. And he probably can. It’s hard to breathe with his weight on you like this, but as always, there’s a perverse enjoyment of it. You kinda don’t mind. 

“That’s what I don’t get about all this,” the Boss grunts, letting go of one of your hands to shove his against your throat, and you moan to spite him or yourself. “You’re supposed to be Ocelot’s, but you always play so fair.”

“You cheated,” you gasp out, before he pushes all the sound and air out of you. God, he’s so big, he’s so _heavy_ — 

“With _white always mates?_ ”

You hear it and stiffen, but in the same space you hear your song, like a slow swing on a low tree branch, _we’ll sing in the sunshine, and I’ll be on my way…_

You can remember your thought process when you heard that song, when you chose it. The year had been the important thing, but you dreamed that it sounded like her. Imagined it. You hold onto that, you hold onto the faceless image of a woman, of sunshine, flowers.

It’s the hardest thing you’ve ever done, to hold onto that, onto the music you’re not supposed to hear and to let go of the words you are, but it’s doable. You do it. You feel yourself do it, and there’s a kind of vicious pleasure in seizing yourself back, even as your heart pounds fit to burst and your brain screams. It’s easy to go limp, but you retain a sensation through your limbs like a bright thread. They’re still yours. 

The Boss lets go of you slowly. His weight eases off of you and his hand is the last thing to leave your neck. You breathe deeply, trying to speed up the rate of it like you’re scared. He sits down to the side, shakes his head briefly, as if to clear water out of his ears.

“What do you really want, Civet?” He asks, out of breath. You track the rise and fall of his chest greedily, the simple gesture he makes with his hand. Hurry up and spill your guts. “Ocelot's not listening. You can tell me.”

You make a small, wordless noise that forces him to get closer. He doesn’t seem to mind, he obviously isn’t afraid of you at any range. He isn’t putting his face within biting distance, though. “Boss…”

“Back where we started, huh.” He runs his knuckles against the side of your face, which is a very gentle gesture that doesn’t reach his eye.

“My… uniform.” You push yourself to look the way you need to. Brimming with something. You don’t even think it needs to be hunger for him to want to know. You’ve seen the way his gaze follows strong feelings of every kind. Like something he had once, doesn’t now.

Your fingertips twitch against the hangar floor as he undoes the top part of your uniform, decisively. That doesn’t always rule out the intimacy of it, and you feel a powerful rush of gratification as he stops, suddenly and deeply absorbed in the flowers stuffed into the space between your undershirt and your uniform jacket.

Whole stalks, just blossoms, loose petals, whatever wouldn’t be missed from this one small section of the Animal Conservation platform. The flowers that only Ocelot seems to care about. This was a wild shot in the dark, and you can feel yourself aching with triumph as you realize it paid off—these _meant_ something. The Boss dips his hands into the white petals, threading through them to find your ribs, your body, to make sure they're real, you're real.

It’s amazing he didn’t smell them before now, but it doesn’t matter. You run your hands up his arms and he doesn’t seem to notice, a thousand years away. There’s an unsteadiness in his hands that you love. You could eat that grim, jaw-wired-shut look off his face. His eye flicks rapidly to your face, to the flowers, and you can’t follow his thought process.

“These are special,” you say, dimly aware that the music is still going, still looping, still loud. But he can hear you at this range. “Right, Jack?”

The force that he punches the floor with where your face had been would’ve driven your nose into your brain and killed you.

As it is, you hear the mess it makes of his hand as you roll out of the way. It gives you space to kick at him, to twist up and back on your feet and hit him hard enough that your fist hurts too. 

You try to keep him down on his knees, but it’s harder than it would’ve been before. You’re not sure if he’s seeing you anymore, or if he’s feeling when you hit him. He grabs you and throws with his whole weight and strength, and even rolling doesn’t save you from the impact, the floor crashing up into you through empty space. 

You stagger up, bleeding flowers but mostly blood, shaking your uniform to shed more. He stalks and paces like an animal, not giving up avenues of attack but looking for the one he wants. He’s favoring his right hand, but only because it won’t properly curl into a usable fist. He’ll still hit you with it if he needs to.

Red auxiliary lights kick on and seem blinding in their intensity, and you catch the Boss blinking as you rush him, taking advantage of the momentary disorientation. You kick at his knee, lunging to try and hook your hands into his face, his hair, keep him blinded. It’s a mistake to get that close as he throws you again, and you feel some of your ribs crunch as you land this time. It makes getting up hard, and you’re not fast enough to get off your hands and knees before he’s back, kicking you in the stomach.

You throw up immediately, choking yourself with hot vomit and struggling to breathe in after it. You have to push yourself to roll over so you don’t legitimately choke, hacking and wheezing face-first on the floor, instinctively scrambling away before his boot comes down again where your skull would’ve been.

Something about vomiting has pushed you into a different state. You stop thinking, stop running. You remember who he is, how big he is, where his blind spot is, and make an inhuman noise as you take one punch so you can get in close, smashing your fist up and into his throat. It’s glancing but enough to stun him, and you hit him again, kicking as soon as he stumbles. Maybe crack a couple of his ribs. Give what you’ve got.  

“ _CIVET!”_ It’s Ocelot, and you stop where you are, startled into silence. He’s there, fully-dressed, awake, armed. In one piece.

You drool and spit the taste of bile out of your mouth, breathing carefully through pain in your sides. Limp out of range of the Boss, even as he moves towards Ocelot with the same kind of pinched gait.

Ocelot’s posture to him is half-open, half-wary. “Snake—”

“Give me your gun, Ocelot.” His voice, if possible, sounds worse since you punched him.

There are little movements like Ocelot looking at you, looking back to the Boss, that you can see now in the red light. “Explain to me what’s going on, first.”

You pick a flower out of your belt loop and stick it behind your ear. Licking your lips and your chin, you can taste bile. Mostly blood.

The Boss huffs out a noise that might’ve been a laugh at another time. “A fun second date. What’s it look like?” 

“Jack and I were just talking,” you say, and there’s a plan to say more smarmy bullshit that has to get tossed to the side as the Boss rushes you, fast and dark and red.

He hits like a hurricane, even with his injured hand. He knows where to hit now too, doubling up on the ribs, the sweltering hot point in your stomach. You’d known it’d be like this, that he’d eventually get you in a hold you couldn’t hope to break. You’re just happy you made him a little miserable before you got there.

“Boss, easy,” Ocelot’s saying, sounding concerned in almost a human way. “I’ll deal with Civet, just—”

“Adam,” The Boss says, hot and staggered by your ear. “I need you. Come over here.”

Ocelot goes, immediately. You can’t imagine what that would be like, to hear the Boss say those words, but you can see it written on Ocelot’s face in stunned disbelief. Absolute compliance that has nothing to do with brainwashing. He unholsters a revolver the closer he gets, and you think that this isn’t so bad. You’d always thought Ocelot would probably be the death of you. No hard feelings.

In white hospital scrubs, Moth flutters out of the darkness behind him in bare feet, silent as they grab the red wrist holding the gun and sink a syringe into the side of his neck. Through the scarf. The Boss makes a terrifying noise and you laugh in delight even as he constricts further on you, grinding cartilage.

Ocelot turns and seems to crumble like soft stone as he tries to concentrate on Moth. They step into his path and more or less catch him as he goes down, gun clattering to the deck. You would’ve just let him fall and break that beautiful nose. They really are nicer than you.

Moth yanks the other revolver out of its holster before stepping over Ocelot, raising it to level at the Boss’s face. “Let go of Civet, sir.”

He does, but not before he gives one last brief, threatening squeeze like a promise.

You step clear of him and try to take a breath, pushing the pain aside. It’s telling your body to stop, and that’s not useful right now. It brings everything into sharp focus, brings you back to the present. If you displace it, the pain’s not so bad, it’s just a lot of it, everywhere. Moth tosses you the revolver they’ve got, before stooping down and getting the other one from where Ocelot had dropped it. The weight is strangely heavy in your hand, although you should remember the Tornado well enough.

Keeping your eyes on the Boss as you pace back around behind him, you empty out the revolver, holding your thumb over two cartridges, snapping the cylinder back into place. Only two shots left, and you pull the trigger until you know they’re lined up. Moth does the same, although they dump _all_ the cartridges, scattering them further around with a foot. Not even in socks. They really did just come from the Medical platform. You grin at them even as you talk to Snake. “What was that about playing fair, Boss?”

“Two against one? You’ll still need better odds.”

It sounds very cool, but he’s wrong. 

You keep the revolver in hand, and Moth does too. The two of you working in tandem on either side is too much. If it had just been one of you, he would’ve had a chance, especially if it was you. Even with the gun for adding metal and weight to your strikes, you’re a mess. But Moth is faster than you, you don’t even need to account for them because they’re already filling the spaces you leave behind, kicking his leg out from under him, yanking a thrown punch off-balance. You use the Tornado like a club, but theirs hits like a hammer. Precise.

Before, you’d thought fighting with the Boss was like a dance, but that was a slow two-step in the middle of a crowded cafeteria compared to this. This is a waltz, this is ballet, this is the fucking pasodoble, and all the pain in the world couldn’t stop you from enjoying it. How he doesn’t stop even when he’s outnumbered, how neither of you ease up when you know you should.

If he stopped long enough to try and use a trigger phrase, you don’t even notice. You let yourself hear nothing but the song, the same song you’ve heard probably as many times as he has by now. You’re singing in sunshine, before you head on your way.

You hope the two of you beat him to death, that it takes so much that you die too. You can see him flagging, even when he gets in close enough to head butt you, it’s messy. Moth drags him off of you with a strength you’ve never associated with them, the crook of the revolver around his neck like a garrote. He looks beautiful and savage, pulled taut like that.

“Do you want any more?” Moth asks, panting.

You shake your head, wiping your mouth on the back of your hand.

They let him go with a hoarse intake of air, backing away quickly like they’d unleashed a big cat. He’s breathing hard through a bloody nose and mouth, and you feel like you’re looking at yourself in some strange way. A version of yourself that’s calcified, built up hundreds of layers. Aged thousands of years. Some primordial thing. 

“Tell me again,” you say, spitting blood to the side and raising up the last loaded gun in the room. “About odds.”

He grins, although it’s something more like a baring of red teeth. “Something tells me you’ve heard enough.”

“Quite an understatement, Boss.”

Incredibly, the hatch to the entirely-theoretical outside world bangs open, and all you can do is stare dumbly at it.

It’s Miller, stepping ungainly and too hurried over the edge, into the darkness, letting the weight of the door swing shut behind him too quickly and loudly. You can see him, approaching and armed with reason, and resent it fully. You aim the revolver at Big Boss and gesture. He stays down on his knees, hands lifting behind his head in silence. You circle behind him so you don’t have to look at his face.

The Commander drops his crutch at some point and draws his handgun, which you know isn’t an empty threat. He levels it at you, and you know better than to doubt his aim or his vision in the dark. You’ve heard stories. “Civet.”

“Commander.” Miller looks like he’d fallen asleep at his desk and just hobbled at full speed all the way here. He’s missing the greatcoat, his tie’s loosened, he smells like liquor unimpeded by ice. When was the last time you saw him in shirtsleeves?

“This is a surprise,” he says, carefully, trying to judge your emotional state.

Moth is a pale statue in the darkness. White scrubs, fresh bandages, and not much else.

“I’m surprised anybody would find us in here, sir.” At least, not all three of you. And all alive.

“You think I don’t know when someone breaks into Room 101 for a secret fight to the death?” He sounds terse, like there’s a _Jesus, you really are just like Ocelot_ waiting to follow it up, but he keeps it locked down. One isn’t supposed to insult people in a hostage situation.

You shrug. “Didn’t think of that, sir.”

“Do you know what you’re doing, Civet?”

You have to glance at Moth in disbelief. _This_ was where they’d laid their affections? “Yes?”

“Then tell me.”

It’s pretty obvious, but if he wants to hear it, he can hear it. He’s just keeping you talking, but you still have a gun to Big Boss’s head. You can afford to talk. “This is the logical conclusion. If you hit a dog long enough, it bites. He knows that and did it anyway.”

“I agree,” Miller’s hand tightens slightly on the gun. “But he’s your commanding officer. Ocelot stressed that, didn't he?”

“He deserves this. Hardly anybody is ever gonna to get what they deserve, but I can make sure of it this time.” You don’t like talking to Miller. It’s making you emotional in a weird way, seeing him here. Like a bizarre third option when you’d finally narrowed it down to two. “Look at him and tell me he shouldn’t die for what he did. Even just to you.”

“It’s not that simple,” he says, but you can hear him leveling out, trying on the coaxing tone. You’re not convinced it isn’t that simple. “You want to change something by killing him. What do you want to happen?”

“Is Venom Snake real?” You hear yourself say it before you can lock it away, and you renew your grip on the revolver. You should’ve built it up more, let Miller bargain his way to getting asked this so he feels like he’s winning something when he answers. Why does everyone want to know what you want? It's obvious. 

“What?”

“Tell me. Tell me if Venom Snake, if that Boss, if he’s real. Has this been the only one the whole time? Did I—?” _Did I turn myself into this for him?_

Miller hesitates, just a fraction of a second, and all the fury in your body has to go to the fingers squeezing the grip of the gun because the only place left is your trigger finger and you need the man at the end of it alive for the moment. 

You’re angry because you know what Miller’s going to say, with his face composed in tired disbelief, like you’re the one being stupid. Like he didn’t just doubt for a moment and then decide to lie to you about it. “Of course he’s real.”

“Then where is he?” 

He doesn’t say anything for too long, so you move the gun just past the Boss’s ear, into the triangle of space framed by his arm. It’s a motion you have to do in one heartbeat, pull away, fire, return. Any hesitation would’ve given him the necessary opening to move, and that no longer belongs to him.

The shot is loud and you’re sure you’ve hurt his hearing on that side, but Miller’s the only one in the room who twitches. The bullet ricochets off the deck and buzzes into the girders above. 

“We’ll find out together,” he says, finally. There’s an honesty in it you think is too genuine to be meant solely for you. He’s probably looking at Moth’s busted face or something. He moves slowly to holster his gun, unclipping the iDroid resting beside it on the leather strap. Tunes it to a saved frequency and looks sour about it. “Quiet.” 

The speaker is turned on for your benefit, and you hear a languid hum float out, tinny but real.

“Is Venom on Mother Base?”

A long pause, then two taps to the mic.

“Then get him to Room 101. Bring him by force if you have to.”

An even longer pause. Two taps.

Miller seems to have gotten his cool back when he replaces his iDroid, unholsters his gun again. Slow enough that you could tell him not to, but it’s fine if he wants to have it in hand. He's just got the one. “Happy?” 

“Overjoyed.”

“Is Ocelot dead?”

You hadn’t thought to think about that. A rose red man in a heap on the floor. Is Miller asking out of concern, or because he doesn’t want to be surprised?

“No, sir.” Moth says, abruptly. They’re the one who did it, so they’d know. “Just down for the count.”

“He could be faking. He’s got a tolerance like you wouldn’t believe.” 

“I saw his medical records.” Moth’s head moves like they find it easier to look at Ocelot than Miller. “It’s… tailored for him. So it should be alright. Sir.”

This doesn’t surprise you, and Miller doesn’t seem scandalized. He just stares at them with a regular intensity, not fear or loathing that you can identify. Moth had been confined to the Medical platform for how long? Of course they would break into confidential files. You would’ve found something to do in their situation, it just wouldn’t have occurred to you to study.  

The Boss sighs at the end of your sights. Like a glacier creaking or something large swimming by, a reminder of inherent danger. “This is turning into a real dog and pony show. Promise you'll shoot me if it goes on much longer." 

“This isn’t about you.” It is half about him. It’s about the fact that his presence is also the shape of an absence, the two layers of doublethink creating an unstable loop. Maybe Moth’s boundaries are more porous but you know what you are and how you deserve to be treated. The dissonance of a Boss who doesn’t respect that is too much. It is not what you were promised, and your entire existence hinges on that in a fundamental way you hadn’t known it did until it was stressed.

You feel less stable than you ever have in that long wait. It might have only been a few minutes stretched to feel like days. You try to track time by watching Miller, but he’s found an equilibrium and doesn’t wobble much. Moth seems to hang in the air like a ghost.

When the hatch opens you want to pull the trigger before you can see who steps through, but you hold onto yourself until that madness passes. It gives the man time to get closer, to resolve in the auxiliary lights.

He doesn’t go right to you. Part of it is a relief: he trusts you not to lose it, he wants to check on everyone else. The other part is a desperate wail—what do you have to _do_ to get him to focus on you? To fix this for you? If it’s even him, you think, but of course it is.

He says something to Miller, who scoffs and says something that you can’t hear, but it makes Moth flinch. 

He kneels by Ocelot, checks his airways, his pulse.

He stops by Moth on his way to you, moving slowly as he reaches out to touch their shoulder. Moth can’t look at him, head hung, eyes on the floor.

You hold onto the iron sights of the revolver as long as you can. They’re safe. The back of the Boss’s head is safe. Big fingers intertwined, one hand fucked up. The disappearing space between you and the other Boss has an intensity that goes beyond your threshold of hearing, dips into feeling.

Something stronger than gravity makes you look at him, even as you catch yourself attacking details, looking for the thing that unmakes him. The red arm is there. His face is right. The red lights of the room push his shadow thin and in every direction, but they’re there. You can hear his footsteps, his equipment jingling. Air came in with him and it smells like the outside. Miller talked to him, Moth reacted. He’s probably real. 

He’s got a gun at his hip and you can tell it isn’t a tranq pistol. That doesn’t upset you. You don’t blame him.

“Hey, Civet.”

“Boss.” Your view down the sights of the gun at the back of Snake’s head panes into glassy colors and you blink furiously to clear the tears away, keep your vision sharp. Keep your mind on the pain and the moment. “Where were you.” 

“I wasn’t here. I’m sorry.”

“ _Where_ , Boss.” 

“I don’t know.”

“You—”

“I lost time. Just like you.” He reaches out, bare hand sealing around the length of the gun’s barrel. He took his glove off for this, like he knows you need to see his skin. “We’re the same.”

You can’t ever keep it together around him to begin with, but this—awful gift of the truth, you feel like you have to drop everything else to hold onto it. The _same_. Losing time. The same as you beyond that way—in the way you were made? The Boss is something Ocelot cobbled together, built up, shaped like a pot on a wheel?

“You and Moth aren’t in trouble. You were right to protect each other when no one else would.”

Is that what you’re doing? It had felt like rebellion. Treason. You hadn’t planned to get this far. You know Moth has, you wish they would tell you what to do. How does he know anything that happened? Did Quiet tell him? What did she say? 

“I’m not asking you to forgive him. I want you to trust me.”

Trust him. _Trust_ him. You want to scream at him because he left you to this. He’s dragging you towards whatever awaits you outside this room, past the reality that you have control over. He doesn’t understand how much forgiveness is needed for the both of them.

But he’s your Boss.

“Okay.” You loosen your grip, although it feels almost painful to make your hands and fingers unlock, unclench. Venom takes the gun from you, picks out the last cartridge, tosses it away. You feel dizzy. Unmoored.

Snake turns slowly, and the sight of him makes you sick with horror. Anger. It flash-burns as you watch him, with the extended cognition of seeing something happen faster than your body can move, reach between you, reach past, the familiarity of your Boss’s body like his own, and pull the gun from the holster at his thigh.

You’re lunging to snatch that last hateful eye out of his skull when Venom twists to shield you, and you miss the motion Snake makes to stretch himself out long the other way but you see him at the end of the arc of it, aiming at the bright splash of Moth, alone.

The gunshot is deafening as it fills Room 101 in a single, flat moment of expansive noise, and Snake’s shoulder jerks, his body yanked with the unexpected force. Miller’s arm is raised, a flat exclamation of motion. He shot Snake.

Impact knocks Snake down and he doesn’t even look like he knows he’s been hit, still focused, arm still moving, even though you can see the weaving in his aim. It’s not enough to make him miss when he pulls the trigger. 

Moth doesn’t make any noise you can hear over the gunshot and goes down hard, one leg twisting especially uselessly, and Miller shouts something almost as loud as the gun’s report like _FUCK_ or _NO_ or something else that’s entirely too little, too late.

Your Boss’s arms are a wreath of pressure around your chest, your neck, generalizing the constriction. It’s so he won’t snap something important, but you have to make it hard on him as your body twists, kicking both heels off the ground and hurting your own ribs, anything to get loose so you can dig your hand into the red mess of Snake’s shoulder and start pulling, pulling out anything you can reach, rip it out of him. It’d come out in big spools of ribbon and wine.

 

 It only puts you out long enough to get you flat and disoriented, needing to roll over and try to get yourself back together.

You see Ocelot struggling upright, and it would be hilarious if Moth hadn’t left the needle in his neck like a dagger. There’s a little blood when he pulls it out, swaying with the motion, and it takes him a couple of tries to get his iDroid out, get his fingers working the right buttons. Who’s he going to call to deal with this? Everybody’s involved in the mess.

Venom and Miller are over where you saw Moth fall, Miller’s talking a lot, like if he can keep up a one-sided conversation with Moth they’ll be obliged to stay alive longer. It had happened so fast, you don’t know where they got hit. You can hear your Boss like an undercurrent, _Hold your hand here. Keep pressure on them. Harder, Kaz._

You keep craning your neck to see who else is on the floor, and Snake is. Pretty close, too. Your heels push against the hangar floor and you drag yourself closer. He’s losing blood quickly and you’re injured, but it’ll be enough. You have teeth.

Discordant spur sounds only arrives after Ocelot does, staggering and mostly collapsing on top of you, trying to pin you in place from getting any closer to Snake. He’s heavy and uncoordinated, and you can see the sweat on his face and neck standing out, shining. Eyes huge and too dark. “Don’t. Civet. Don’t.”

“Fuck you. I’m finishing it, _fuck_ you—”

“I need him. I need him.” Ocelot grabs you like he can redirect your energy into himself, keeping your face against him, the hot line of his collarbone. At this range, you can feel and hear his heart, kicking like an animal in a trap. It falls out of Ocelot like something reflexive, looping over and over. _I need him, I need him, I need him._

There’s a more distant hammering that’s outside both your bodies, and it only stops when you hear the hatch scream open, forced under pressure. In theory, light should slam inwards, but there’s just darkness outside, pouring out Ocelot Unit members all shouting _Major!_ at once like a bunch of idiots. You hope Shrew’s among them. You can trust him.

You want to stay awake, you want to watch exactly what they do with Snake, where they take him, where they take you, but you really have been beaten badly. If they’re going to shoot you for treason while you’re conscious, it won’t be any worse if they do it while you’re unconscious.

Continuing to watch your Boss until you can’t any more is the most important thing. He’s the last thing you can see, just a vague shape somewhere near other shapes, a voice in the dark. Someone shuts off the music, and your last hand on the present is gone, leaving the sensation of falling.

 

 


	6. WE'LL SING IN THE SUNSHINE

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're heeeeeeere! :D It's the final chapter! This has been such a blast, and it's left me so energized and charged up to spring into the next arc! An adventure that bites canon firmly on the neck and shakes until dead, so we're going Full AU after this, since we mostly flirt with it here. 
> 
> Thank you so much for your support and comments-- I'm honestly still dazzled that folks are enjoying this. Without getting too mushy, it was always my dream to write a fic with OCs that people would still be into, and seeing it come true and flower into something like this is just absolutely fantastic. 
> 
> If you'd like to hang out in the same online social space or ask questions, etc, I'm at coyotefather.tumblr.com !!
> 
> Thank you again, so much! <3

 

 

 

 

 

 

> **THE HEART CAN STOP WHEN YOU HEAR**
> 
> **SOMETHING NOT MEANT FOR YOUR EARS.**
> 
> **THE CONSOLATION IS THAT**
> 
> **THIS MIGHT BE THE TRUTH.**

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You wake up to Running Serpent trying to put an IV in your arm, and failing miserably. She drops the damn thing when you move, lurching to grab the front of her uniform with a hand that doesn’t want to work right, and takes a couple of deep, quick breaths. “Okay, um, Wounded Civet, you—you’re pretty wounded right now, so—” 

“Where’s Moth,” you slur, looking around. It’s a room in the Medical platform. The inside of your mouth tastes like a crime scene and everything hurts, deeply. Not enough to keep you from pushing up, ribs singing out like firecrackers as you move. “Serpent, _move_ —”

“Listen, I-I’m really not supposed to be here yet, I’m just in training—”

“Oh, I _know_.”

“But I got stuck here, they told me to look after you, so just, make my job easy, please?”

You have half a mind to tell her to get lost, but she really is just a trainee. None of this is her fault. You stop with your legs hanging off the edge of the bed and try to take stock of things again. Integrate new information. “Stuck?”

“Commander Miller’s put the whole Medical platform on quarantine measures, although he says there’s no contagions or contaminants. He just… doesn’t want anyone to come or go right now. I guess.”

Okay, so you’re definitely on the Medical platform. Miller is in one piece, and giving orders. You breathe slowly, trying to decide if the inhale or exhale hurts worse. It’s bad, but you’ll live, and the fact that you’ve been triaged to a newbie says that there are people hurt worse than you. You want a thousand things, mostly just to find Moth.

“So let’s just get back into bed…” Serpent is saying, trying to gingerly lift your boots back up and onto the bed, and you swat her away.

“Serpent, no offense, but I’m gonna ignore you.”

“Just—!” She stomps a foot and it’s so childish you could cry. Not from frustration, but some kind of strange, detached relief that people like this still exist and can interact with you. “I’ll help you, but don’t do anything crazy. Where do you want to go?”

“Moth. I wanna see Moth.”

It turns out that you can’t see Moth, because Moth is in surgery. There’s an orderly passing by your way with some saline packs and extra gauze who tells you as much, and Serpent drags a folding chair out for you to sit in front of the operating theater doors. You feel like an invalid, breathing haggardly and knowing this isn’t doing anyone any good. Serpent just stands nearby, looking like she wants to either wrestle you back into bed or rub your back because you’re so pathetic. 

She doesn’t deserve it when you lurch around to see who else you can find, but hovers like she wants to support you somehow and doesn’t know where to touch. It’s cruel, but you don’t know her and you almost feel like you don’t have the energy to try.

There’s another room with four Ocelot Unit members posted outside it, and you see Sunny Kitten briefly duck out to say something to one of them. It’s enough evidence to make you think Snake is in there, and you stand staring, trying to sift through what you feel. There’s a vital component missing and you know it has something to do with the Boss—somehow, the Boss’s existence, _your_ Boss’s existence, reduces Snake’s importance. Drains away the appetite you had for him.

You return to your post and Serpent seems to relax, until she sees Quiet. The sniper has been patrolling the hall in full regalia, very much armed. You have a vague memory of her being involved. In an important way. She had found the Boss?

Serpent makes some protesting noises when Quiet waves her off, but eventually takes the chance to bolt. Quiet replaces her at your side, leaning against the wall casually. One big boot rolling back and forth on the heel like she’s bored. Maybe she’s here to ward off any enterprising Ocelot Units, although they don’t seem to register you as a threat. Maybe she’s just waiting for the Boss to reappear, or on standby to put Miller in a choke hold if he needs it. 

“Where was he?” You ask, eventually, remembering to tilt your face up to hers. 

She looks down at you with a kind of blandness. The human drama simmering around here seems to slide off her like oil. She puts her hands together, closed, knuckles touching. Thumbs up. One hand moves away from the other, a slow drift into space. You have no idea what that means, but your heart tells you it’s _not here_. Something like that. Distance is implied.

Miller runs out of things to direct or oversee or fret about and ends up on Quiet’s other side, a healthy arm's length away. Propped up between his crutch and the wall. You’ve seen him stumping back and forth in the hall long enough to know what he looks like: flushed, sweaty, wearing Moth’s blood on his hand and his sleeve and his pants. There’s really just a lot of it, all over him. He has an energy that both you and Quiet lack, bristling with some kind of contained action. It seems like an excruciating state.

Eventually the doors open, Canary wrestling with a crinkling apron as Venom leaves, still in bloody gloves. He looks disoriented for a moment, and you hadn’t realized that he had been _in_ there. That’d he’d been _in_ the surgery. Doing the surgery. Miller makes a strangled noise and Quiet moves forward. 

His left hand looks strange, gloved. Rubber over metal. It gets snagged in a mechanism and Quiet doesn’t even let him try to do it on his own, extricating the glove from the delicate joints. Venom lets her, unbothered by the intimacy, and you feel compelled to look away.

Miller doesn’t seem fazed. “Snake’s conscious. Do you know what you want to do with him?”

You have to look up, and you catch Quiet doing the same. Watching Venom. He looks a little surprised underneath thickened layers of exhaustion. Maybe he hadn’t thought he had a say in it. “Is Ocelot with him?” 

“He won’t _leave_.”

“That’s alright. We’ll talk about it in the morning.”

Miller sounds like he’s trying not to be frustrated. “It’s already morning, Boss. You were in there for hours.”

“Tomorrow, then.”

“I’ll clear his schedule.” The Commander has a lot of feelings and none of them seem to be regret that he shot Snake, which you like. It’s a good look on him.

“Thank you, Kaz,” Venom says, and it seems to drag everyone who hears it off the ground and into the clouds. Miller’s face softens and he shifts around, knuckles whitening in bursts on his crutch.

“Boss… is Moth…?”

“Stable. Do you want the details?”

Miller seems to deflate, becoming a body propped up by his crutch. A coat on a hook. “I’ll read the chart.” 

You settle back against the chair and relax. A kind of responsibility seems to have lifted off of you, as if now that you’ve heard it from the Boss himself, you can rest. Moth will live.

“Come on, Civet.” You open your eyes again and find the Boss with his hand outstretched to you. “You need to be in Radiology right now.”

You know rationally, as he helps you up and lets you lean on him like a very frail date, there’s not a lot of difference between switching priorities and moving from one task to another, across professional fields. It’s a Moth quality you’ve only gotten secondhand, but within the context of repairing people, it seems revolutionary. You can’t fathom walking out of surgery and then hobbling with someone down to get a series of x-rays. You can’t imagine chatting with the tech while they work, mostly shop talk and with consideration for another’s opinion. It’s all so reasonable and humane and capable.

Part of you thinks you should be savoring this time, these moments where the Boss is focused just on you, or at least appearing enough to fool you. But there’s a kind of intensity to it that’s burned you out. Like a bell rung too many times, you can only hold the vibrations for so long. The ideal thing would be to go to sleep and wake up before any of this ever happened. Before Snake came.

The consensus is that your ribs aren’t broken in any way that’ll shred something they’re supposed to protect, and Venom adds the x-rays to a big folder that’s full of you. Canary’s scrubbing off after surgery but he’ll handle you getting settled in, making a treatment plan, all the incredibly boring and frustrating shit that you forgot happens after you’ve been hurt.

You go through the motions until you end up back in the room where you’d started. Serpent is gone, and it’s just Venom. Swinging your legs back up on the bed is harder than pushing them off the edge of it, and you flinch when he takes your boots at the ankles and sets them on top of the bed. He starts to unlace one and the feeling swells like you might throw up again. You push and pull your feet out of his hands. “Stop.” 

“Hm?”

“I don’t want you to do that.”

He sets your boot down and leaves you alone, coming back just after you’ve let yourself close your eyes. You only notice you’re cold once he spreads an extra blanket over you, the toes of your boots sticking up past the end of it. Ridiculous. 

Tomorrow will be long. You’ll want to shower and change clothes and probably eat, all of it’s going to hurt. Everything you’re putting off doing tonight to take care of yourself will catch up with you in a rush. But you can’t care. You still don’t fully believe someone won’t decide you’re too much of a traitor and kill you in your sleep, so you can’t plan for too much beyond your own eyelids.

“Civet.”

“Sir?”

“Get into the habit of breathing deeply.”

“Should I do it if it hurts?”

“Yeah. Your biggest worry right now is pneumonia.”

In the scope of things, that seems so _doable_. There has to be more that you should be worried about, but the implication is that you won’t have to carry it alone. So you, personally, can prioritize not getting pneumonia.

Venom is a foreign monolith outside of your focused range of vision. If he ever leaves like that again, you think blearily, he’d better not come back. You can only take this once in your life.

 

 

 

You’re probably only ever going to keep going around in the same unfortunate circles, down the same dangerous roads, but you can think of worse things. Room 101, Ocelot, injury, recovery. There are finer details that you know have carried over as well, but it seems like trying to pick shrapnel out of a corpse. A delicate and ultimately pointless procedure.

It’s easy to think about this because you do really wish you were alone again, in Ocelot’s space. You never had to explain anything to him, because he already knew. In the Medical platform, there’s a lot of rules, a lot of Canary lecturing you, people coming and going and _checking_ on you, constantly. Someone trying to bathe you, someone watching you shower so you don’t fall over, someone trying to help you dress. It’s unbearable. Moth surviving so much of this is a testament to the strength you didn’t think they had.

Not that they look particularly strong when you sneak in to see them. In fact, they look terrible, hooked up to all kinds of tubes and wires and laying like they’d just stayed where someone had put them. Their chart boils down to being shot in the leg, high up enough that the bullet snatched at their femoral artery on the way out. Not as bad as a complete severing, but enough that the blood loss induced something called hypovolemic shock and the jargon just gets more dense from there. There’s also reference to complications regarding previous reconstructive surgery, and guilt falls like ink through water. Their face.

Your mobility is still wrecked, but the Boss telling you it’s alright to breathe deeply despite hurting has given you license to do whatever you want, even if it’s painful. You can clamber into the bed beside them, not near their bad leg. You can rest your head on their chest and listen to their heartbeat. It’s sleepy.

In the light of day and the calm after the storm, you know Moth did more than just show up at a good moment. If you close your eyes, you can hear them explaining things to you. Asking questions, integrating what you know into what they want you to do. It makes sense. You wouldn’t have thought to try the tapes, or the flowers. To go back into the past and fashion it into something to hurt Snake with, while in the same breath not knowing fully what it meant. Disappointingly, you really did tend to fight fair.

There’s a weird comfort knowing Moth was with you. Maybe through a tape you didn’t remember getting, something you listened to in your sleep. Moth, living in your skin, guiding your hands. Syncing up your watches. Listening to the radio. Even in theory, it doesn’t feel like an invasion. There’s something there that you want to articulate or puzzle out—the idea of a room without darkness. Darkness as a natural state, so that the lack of light isn’t distinct or noteworthy. Moth broken and healed in the same ways but constructing a complimentary shape to yours.

You wiggle painfully, ribs protesting at both compression and expansion, until you’re under the covers with them. Someone put socks on their feet.

You hear Miller’s uneven gait coming and fake being asleep even when he hisses _Civet_ at you from the open doorway. He’s just going to tell you to get up and go back to your own bed or something like that, so you keep your eyes shut and your breathing even. There are soft footsteps, the slight squeak of boots on metal. They try to keep quiet, which you appreciate for Moth’s sake.

“Should I get them out of there, Boss?”

“It’s alright. Moth needs to be kept warm.”

A kind of pointed silence. “You know Civet beat the shit out of them, don’t you? That’s why their face is like that now.”

It hadn’t occurred to you that Miller still thought about that, still thought that there might be bad blood between you two. It takes a lot to keep you from smiling and blowing the illusion of sleep, the idea of Miller being _overprotective_ of Moth when it comes to you. Talk about misplaced. 

“I trust Civet,” the Boss says, in his argument-ending voice. “Are you ready, Kaz?”

“It doesn’t matter if I’m not. Let’s get it over with.”

The Boss says something else, but they’re gone, farther off down the hall.

It’s probably involved in really intense and important intrigue, but you’ve done such a good job faking being asleep on Moth, it’d be a shame to ruin all your hard work to go after them.

 

 

 

You wake up once in the day, briefly, for Sunny Kitten to threaten you with medication and bribe you with some kind of clear soup that smells wonderful. Salty and warm. Maybe there’s fish in it? She watches you slurp and dribble your way to the bottom of the bowl in record time before immediately settling back down against Moth in a kind of aggressively smug sort of way. You’re not going to get up.

She rolls her eyes but doesn’t press the issue. Checks Moth’s vitals, makes a note on their chart, leaves with the dishes. You can’t fall asleep until she’s gone, but when it’s quiet again, you couldn’t stay awake if you wanted to. 

The next time you wake up, you’re stiff and sore from being crammed into the same hospital bed for so long. You’re thirsty enough to stagger to the bathroom in that creaky, unbalanced way your ribs dictate when they hurt and cup water into your mouth from the faucet. It’s cold and clear and you can brace yourself on the sink’s edge with your free hand.

Looking in the mirror is a mistake, even with the muted lights of the nighttime shifts. You’re pretty trashed, and you look thin in a strange way. Probably the stupid hospital gown and the way you need to hold onto something and keep your knees locked. It’s a transitory state, you know, not permanent, so you try not to let it dishearten you.

When you’re done in the bathroom, you think about going back to your own room and trying to sleep in your bed. The sheets and pillow will be cold at first, but that could be nice. Refreshing. You’re thinking about all the ways you’d enjoy it as you crawl back in beside Moth, telling yourself how great it’ll be for future you. Not present you, though.

Once you’re settled back down, that’s when you notice what’s changed. If you’d thought you were out of it before, that’s nothing to laying down and realizing someone’s left a vase of flowers and a cassette player on a side table where you or Moth could reach it.

If it was a snake, you think, retrieving the Walkman with a painful stretch in your side, it would’ve bit you.

It has a cassette already loaded, although it’s unmarked. No headphones around, but it’s not like you have any secrets from Moth. The familiar white flowers make you think it’s from Ocelot, with his flair for the dramatic.

You settle back down against Moth and start the tape, keeping the volume low so you don’t wake them, or let the recorded conversation escape the room. It starts with the sound of a door opening, Miller’s distinctive footsteps, and you think it must’ve been cut down from a longer recording to start at such a fortuitous place. That’d have Ocelot’s prints all over it, even if the damn thing didn’t start with his voice. 

_“Here to court martial us, Miller?”_

_“When the day comes, you aren’t going to get a trial. We both know that.”_

A gravel noise precedes Snake. It’s just that thing he does with his voice. _“If we’re giving out court martials, I can think of a couple names.”_

_“You really want to lead with that? You’re the one that showed up, displaced Venom, and then ran those two into the ground.”_

_“And you let me do it, Kaz.”_

_“I’m_ aware _,”_ Miller snarls, sounding somehow more aggressive about that than anything he had with a gun in his hand. _“This goes beyond a couple of staff members. We’ve kept most of the rumors from spreading to the FOBs, but everyone on Mother Base knows about you. You’ve ruined your own circuitous, masterminded plot.”_

 _“I’m fine with that.”_ says Snake, and there’s a kind of silence that you imagine Ocelot doesn’t even blink through. Perfectly still, giving nothing away. _“It doesn’t change anything in the long run, and they deserve to know the truth. I won’t be sticking around anyway.”_

_“Oh, you’ve decided that, have you?”_

_“Yeah. I saw what I wanted to see. You won’t have any trouble settling in at Galzburg. Already bought the land.”_

_“Bought—? You don’t get to make that call!”_ Miller’s coat, rustling in agitation like feathers. _“You don’t get to just show up and tell us where to go!”_

 _“It’s the long run, Kaz,”_ Venom says, softly. It’s the first time you’ve heard him on the tape and it makes your heart beat a few uneven thumps. You know him right away in comparison to Snake. Why is it so much easier when you can’t see them?

 _“I don’t care! We’ve poured so much time, so much_ money _into Mother Base, I’m not uprooting everything just because you said to! You have no idea what we’ve sacrificed to keep this place. The days of worshipping your every word are over, Snake, they aren’t coming back.”_

 _“Then go.”_ Ocelot says, blandly. Not as a challenge, just a statement. _“You don’t have to be involved.”_

_“Shut up, Ocelot.”_

_“You didn’t have any help getting here, did you.”_ It’s Venom, and everybody is quiet right away.

 _“No.”_ Snake doesn’t say it with any pride. _“But I knew what to look for. Not everyone does, but it’s just a matter of time before one of them guesses right. And you’ve had infiltration attempts before.”_

 _“You think Mother Base isn’t secure?”_ Miller says, the way his voice has both volume and force feeling like a slap. It’s embarrassingly defensive.

_“I know it’s not. I don’t want to see it go down in flames a second time.”_

_“We all know it can’t last forever.”_ Ocelot sounds gentle, sounds alarmingly genuine. The hair on the back of your neck raises. _“You’ve proved it’s doable, if you have enough money and cussedness. But it’s not a permanent home, not what you’re really looking for. Imagine not having to worry about strut drift or rust maintenance.”_

_“You don’t know a fucking thing about what I’m really looking for.”_

_“I want time to think about it.”_ Venom says it more gently than you think anybody in the room deserves. 

_“Venom—”_

_“That’s fair.”_ Snake talks over Miller. _“I brought the plans with me. We can look at them together.”_

 _“No, you can leave them,”_ Miller snaps, and you hear the thump of his crutch, the slight drag of the prosthetic’s heel. _“You’re going to leave them, and you’re going to get the hell out of here.”_

Snake’s voice sounds like he’s smiling. _“Before you shoot me again?”_

_“I’ll let Civet finish what they started.”_

_“Why don’t you give them to me?”_ Snake asks, like it’s a bright idea that just hit him. You find yourself shrinking against Moth reflexively, suddenly seeing the tape as a warning, a preamble to a decision made about your life. It’s not that you’re frightened of Snake, but you see yourself… adjusting. You hate him, but he would bring out the best animal in you. You know it and it makes you feel a little sick. _“They’ve got a mean streak that I can use. Seems like they’re a little too wild for here as it is.”_

 _“Do you know the role of the Praetorian Guard in imperial Rome, Snake?”_ Miller pipes up, with a kind of intensely bitter energy. Eagerness. _“Cohortes praetorianae. They were an elite regiment of warriors designated to be the emperor’s personal bodyguards. More than once, they turned on an emperor they thought was unworthy of the throne, and replaced him with someone who fit their agenda. They forced Nero to kill himself.”_

 _“Did you lose your hearing, too?”_ It’s the first time you’ve heard Snake really sneer at him. _“I want Civet, not yours.”_

 _“No.”_ Venom says it and you bunch Moth’s paper gown up in your fists, pressing your mouth against their shoulder. _“They’ll stay with me.”_

 _“Boss, we can compromise.”_ Ocelot says, carefully. Reasonably. _“Lion’s just as good. I’ll recall her, and she can go.”_ You don’t know which one of them he’s appealing to.

 _“No.”_ Venom is sharper this time. Your heart is spiraling out of control. _“They’re mine. All of them. That’s the end of it.”_

 _“Alright. Have it your way.”_ Snake doesn’t sound unduly put out, just surprised. _“Am I free to go, then?”_

 _“You’ll stay in here until we say otherwise.”_ Miller makes noise like he’s leaving, and you hear the door open. There are Ocelot Unit members who would’ve been out there to hear him, so it’s deliberate. _“If you ever come back here, I’m not letting you leave a second time. I’ll drop you on the Quarantine platform and let those two hunt you for sport.”_

The sound of him stumping out of the room, Venom behind him. No goodbyes given, no well wishes necessary. Maybe they’ll all reconvene at some other point before Snake leaves, but you like the image of your Boss not having anything else to say to Snake. Not wasting formalities on him.

The tape should probably end, but there’s still a moment of just Ocelot and Snake that you can’t turn away from before it makes it through to you, like something not really meant for you but shown anyway. The curve of a bare leg.

_“That went better than I thought it would.”_

_“Were you expecting a Mexican standoff?”_

_“Kinda hoping for it, really.”_

The tape finally shuts off and you press yourself further into Moth, like you could burrow under or into them. You wish intensely they would make some kind of noise or shift around in response, but they don’t. In the future you can see yourself resisting the urge to pinch them to try and make them do something, the impending desperation in the face of an absence.

You disturb them one more time to shove the cassette player underneath the nest of pillows beneath them. They’ll either find it or you’ll bring it to their attention when they wake up, since you know it’s just as much for them as it is for you.

Maybe you’ll listen to it with them again when the time comes, under the covers like it’s past a curfew. Telling secrets at a sleepover.

 

 

Canary comes by to give you his best bedside manner bullshit about it all, about how you’re cleared to leave under certain conditions, barred from certain activities, committed to certain check-ups. He looks cagey about Moth and just says _They’ll wake up when they wake up._

You let that chase you out of bed and back into life. You breathe the cold morning air deep into sore lungs, you hang out with Rhino and Ibex at breakfast, you either babysit the new recruits or get stuck with more desk work, but at least it keeps you occupied and out of the Medical platform. 

You see the Boss around too, and almost every time you do you see one or two Diamond Dogs looking on nearby, confused but mostly relieved. Pequod plays music again over ocean and between the cranes, you can hear DD’s barking bouncing off stairways and bulwarks.

When the environment around you returns to normalcy, it gives you two extremes: the relief when you feel like you’ve returned as well, and the isolation when you think you’ll never come home again. You don’t want to feel like you have to patrol at night, you don’t want to lurk around the Medical platform like you’re expecting something to happen, but it’s impossible not to. You’d just waste your nights staring up at the ceiling awake and tense if you weren’t out there.

You tell yourself it’ll get better once you see Snake’s chopper lift off, but it gets keeping delayed. Negotiations on a drop off point. Communicating with the right FOB for refueling. Health reasons. Bad weather. You want to kick down Miller’s door and demand that he gets thrown off a platform in a life raft, if Emmerich can theoretically survive then it’ll be a luxury cruise for Snake.

In reality it doesn’t take too long, but it builds up a fear that he _won’t_ leave. And for all your fantasies, you know better than to yell at Miller about it, seeing as he’s probably the only person who wants him gone more than you. Preaching to the choir.

He leaves on a cloudless blue day. Miller’s going over the flight plan for the umpteenth time with Queequeg, who you suspect may be receiving instructions to stuff his ears with cotton if Snake starts talking to him on the ride. Snake and the Boss are talking, courteously downwind of everyone else since there are two cigars going. You force yourself not to stare at the two of them in concert. The way they stand together is so close and complimentary to each other that they look like how you feel with Moth. It’s stupid, but you don’t want to pollute the way you see your Boss with Snake. 

Ocelot’s there, looking even more strung out due to the vibrancy of his scarf in the sunshine. His gaze is distant, way out at sea, and he doesn’t react as the white folded paper of seagulls flash past the helipad. You wonder if he’s tried so hard to be with Snake that he’s left his own body to wither.

“I wanted to ask you about something,” he starts, only reanimating the human things like blinking and eye contact after he’s had time to hear his own voice. “Snake said you ignored a trigger phrase.”

“Am I going to lose my ‘most functional’ status?” 

“I’m trying to talk shop with you, Civet.”

You know it and you appreciate it. But as much as you don’t want to reveal your secrets, you know Ocelot’s the only one who would fully appreciate them, perversely. “All the delicate stuff was Moth’s idea. The tapes, the songs, the year.” The flowers.

He makes a thoughtful noise, but doesn’t ask anything else. You’re not afraid for Moth if he decides he wants to know more. They’re as tough as you, maybe even more in some ways. And it's not like he could get much out of them right now.

It makes sense that you get a question in return, and you’re pleasantly surprised when he focuses in on you. “Are you going to follow him now? And leave, I mean.” 

“That implies,” Ocelot sighs. “That I haven’t always been following him.”

Imagining life on the base without Ocelot isn’t difficult. It’s a little emptier, and you face the thought of ending up trying to fill the void Shalashaska would leave in the ranks and find you don’t want the job.

“But, no. I have my instructions.” His mouth twists a little, like he hears the irony in Revolver Ocelot having been _instructed_ to do something. “You can’t get rid of me that easily.”

“Worth a shot, sir.”

“How’d you find his name?”

Accidentally. “He went all over the base, but he only went close enough to the Mammal Pod to see what it was. Then he never went back.” You’d found enough time to listen to it. It had a lot to say, but only one name it cared about. And you guessed from there.

Ocelot’s eyebrows lift in a little face of appreciative consideration, like he wouldn’t have thought you were that clever. Moth didn’t have to do everything for you. “If you do that again, I’ll let him kill you.”

This is picking at a wound that hasn’t quite healed over, and you want to snap at him for even thinking to scold you. “If I do it again, you’ll have to kill me yourself.” If you do it again, you aren’t going to stop because of some dramatic intervention from Miller. You’re going to kill him or die trying.

“It’s a deal, then.” Ocelot claps a hand on your back, eventually letting himself slide that hand higher to grab you by the back of the neck and rock you back and forth a little. You grin despite yourself, just long enough to enjoy it before the Boss turns around, and you see Snake toss the butt of his cigar out into the empty blue beyond the platform.

The Boss nods at the two of you before joining Miller, finally freeing Queequeg to start up the rotors. Snake walks with the same cadence to you, with a directness that shuts out Ocelot. If you started running now, you could probably get him over the edge of the platform, if you were willing to go with him.

Another time. You stare him down and don’t salute. Ocelot sighs again.

“We never did get time to talk, did we?” Snake asks. “Just the two of us.”

“Go ahead. I don’t have any secrets from the Major.” You can feel the look Ocelot’s giving you like heat on the side of your face. “Sir.”

“Nah. Doing business while the other party is angry isn’t fair. Don’t want you to hurt your own prospects, Civet.” His smile is lopsided and cold, but you see for a moment what must’ve built MSF back in the day. You roll your shoulders and cast around for something else to look at.

Snake leans forward, snagging one of the ends of Ocelot’s scarf and pulling until it’s tight around his neck and fundamentally uneven. “We’ll meet again.” 

“Of course.”

You look even farther away to see Miller staring in your direction, looking tired and unhappy. There was a motion between Snake and Ocelot before you turned away that couldn’t have been anything other than a lean in to kiss, which upsets you in a way that you can’t articulate.

Regardless of what really happened, Ocelot doesn’t faint or keel over as Snake leaves, the man himself pausing only briefly to say something to Venom before he’s on the chopper in an easy, practiced motion. You hope the sun barreling in through those windows makes wearing that stupid leather jacket uncomfortably hot. 

And then he’s gone.

Ocelot doesn’t stick around to watch the chopper fade into the distance, just turns around and picks up life wherever he left it to deal with Snake. Miller moves like his body is hurting him more than usual and the Boss trails after like a tethered balloon.

You should resume work too, but the sound of the helicopter hasn’t faded entirely. If you strain, you feel like you can still hear it. It makes you nervous about going back indoors, which might not have filtered out the smell of the cigar.

That you don’t feel an overwhelming swell of relief is so crushing that you retreat back to Moth. The door’s open and you can smell the sea breeze that must be coming in through an open window, just to move right back out again. As soon as you can see in you keep walking like you were originally headed somewhere further down the hallway—Miller’s in there with them.

Even though you leave the sight behind quickly enough, your brain keeps turning up more details it had snatched from that one glance. Moth still flat against the pillows, illuminated by sunshine. The tidal push and pull of Miller’s voice. He’d better be practicing an apology. You don’t want or need to concentrate on that tableau, but it’s either that or fixating on yourself.

You station yourself at one of the picnic tables posted somewhere out of the wind, ostensibly for lunch breaks and truly for smoking. It’s surprising that nobody is out there when you are, but you suppose everyone on the Medical platform is probably stretching their legs after that quarantine Miller put in place. There are better views than this, mostly industrial underbelly of another strut and the sea below. The sky is only implicit.

You try sitting at the green-gray pressure treated wood, trying to imagine it getting assembled. Whether or not it was just boards or if Miller had to sign off on picnic table parts. You feel clumsy and stand back up, hanging onto the railing instead.

The cigarette smell is something tangible, anyway. And you can hear generators, background noise but better than silence or blades in the air.

Venom shows up after some undefined amount of time, and the two of your stare at each other for a moment before you salute, not arriving at anything else you could do.

“Civet.” He gestures you to relax, something in him reengaging as you lower your arm slowly. “How’re your ribs?”

“They look terrible.”

He sits down at the picnic table. “You wanna show me?”

Not really. “Okay.” And just like that, you’re struggling to get out of the top part of your uniform, pulling up your undershirt. You do it quickly so it hurts worse than usual, and it feels fucking ridiculous to be standing out here with the air moving around your bare skin and the Boss gently guiding you at the waist to turn when he wants you to.

“Breathing still hurts?” He smells strongly of wormwood at this distance, and although you’ve never particularly liked it, you hold onto it fiercely.

“Yeah, but I’m doing it like you said.”

“Good.”

You look down in time to see him with the tip of his gloves between his teeth, and it sets you off in a weird way, stumbling back a bit. Still holding your uniform bunched up.

Venom notices but doesn’t stop, following through with removing his glove to show you what he meant. His bare hand looks so complex compared to the mechanical one. You feel like he’s moving slowly, like he would with a wild animal or a nervous horse. You aren’t either, you’ve been trained specifically not to be that, but you appreciate the sensitivity to it. You want to make use of it, want to bolt or bite.

He holds out his hand and doesn’t ask, just waits until you step forward again before he lays it flat against your skin. It’s a firm touch where you had expected more gentility, which is something. Your Boss doesn’t think you’re fragile. You keep your eyes locked on the horizon as he presses methodically, looking for dangerous collapse or unusual fragmenting.

“Any fevers?”

“No, sir.”

“Nausea?”

“Not a distracting amount, sir.”

“Any blood in your urine?”

“Is that—is that gonna happen?”

“If it does, get back here to Canary." 

“Okay. Yes, sir.”

Your heart is racing, and you think you’re doing a pretty good job of staying still, but maybe he can hear it at this range. Your body giving you away.

“Civet?”

“Sir.”

“Can you look down at me?”

“Rather not, sir.”

“What do you think you’ll see?”

God, you don’t know. The not knowing is partly it. The other part is amateurish. “Maps, sir.”

He makes a _hm_ noise, not a _huh_. That should be enough for you. Proof enough. You fought so hard to get your Boss back, you should be able to accept him easily enough. Just like how you _should_ feel relief, how you _should_ be able to stand down.

“It’s going to look bad for a while. As long as you don’t feel suddenly worse or do anything too extreme, you’ll heal up. Keep coming back in for check-ups, though.” He pulls gently at your clothes until you let go, and Big Boss tucks in your undershirt for you, buttons you back up.

“Yes, sir.”

He smooths your uniform one more time before he seems to catch himself, settling back down. Hands folded on his lap, glove draped over one thigh. “What else can I do for you, Civet?”

Well, he could kick Miller out of Moth’s room so you could skip work for the rest of the day and sleep. “Are we going to leave Mother Base, sir?”

“Not until we have to.” He says it at a pace that makes you think it's the truth, that he’s thought about it and it’s a conclusion he’s weighted very heavily. “That’s my decision.” 

It’s only after he’s answered that you remember you only know about the possibility of a move because of a secret recording, and Venom seems to have been waiting for you to remember that before he speaks again.

“Ocelot tapes everything. Did you hear Kaz call you the Praetorian Guard?”

You want to melt through the grating and into the sea. “Yes, sir.”

“He’s more right than he knows.” Human fingers laced with machine. “Do the same for me.”

Oh, that feels very bad. “Boss, I’m not going to—”

“Yes, you are. I want to know that if I stop being worth following, you’re going to stop it before it goes too far.”

“Don’t ask me to do that, Boss.” You sound pathetic, even to yourself. If he’s gone, then the only other man shaped the same way to fill his role is the devil.

Looking at him is risky. All you get from a glance is the color of his eye, like a light under the water’s surface. The set of his mouth. He doesn’t look mad, just a little regretful. “I want you to prize your safety and the safety of your family above one man’s life. I know Ocelot didn’t beat that out of you.”

He’s got all the proof he could ever want. You wonder if he’ll ask Moth the same thing. If he’ll charge every one of you with the same order. “No, sir. I will, sir.”

“Thank you.”

There can’t possibly be anything else left to stress you out, but you don’t want to face going back inside. You watch Venom looking out at the sea, and move carefully to sit down beside him, back against the table’s edge.

He doesn’t move to turn towards you, or do anything at all. Your body has no choice but to calm down eventually, and the rest of you quiets in suit. You know with certainty that if you spent long enough beside him, you would stop feeling the boundaries between bodies, like you do with Moth. Maybe not exactly, because of what he’s been made into, who he was fashioned into, but if you tried he could feel familiar too.

You want to say that to him, thinking again of the moment your realized Moth was confronting who they had become without any choice, and wondering if he’s doing the same thing. If he knew in bits and pieces, or if it came down in one blow. A lonely and ugly process.

You try to think of what he might’ve been like before he was the Boss, but there’s something morbid about that. It doesn’t matter now.

 

 

 


End file.
